Laughing all the way
I found this You Tube video at Ann Althouse’s, featuring the bride who couldn’t stop laughing:
I have been known to fall prey to the same phenomenon, especially when pregnant—which was not at my own wedding, fortunately, but as a wedding spectator, in a pew that magnified the quaking/shaking tendency of my (or anyone else’s) laughter. It can be painful as well as embarrassing to laugh so much, at times even requiring a shameful exit from the scene.
On occasion I even have been known to laugh in my sleep so hard that it woke me up. Usually, it was at some joke that seemed indescribably, unbearably hilarious in the dream. But on wakening, it didn’t seem especially humorous at all. Anyone else ever had this happen?
Perfect !
My bride of 15-years(Today)insisted that I send this thread to her so she can share with a dozen girlfriends. ‘Nuff said!
Not the laughing in the sleep. But yes as to the laughing.
My siblings and I used to “get the giggles” (as my Mother called it) when we were in our teens, once a year during the Christmas Eve church service. For that particular service, the church was always really packed, and it included people who were lost and clueless as to when to stand, kneel, etc. (since they were infrequent, couple times a year “C and E’ers”). A little confused blundering in the pew in front of us is okay and doesn’t trigger anything – but if it happens to become combined with anybody within ear range, say – right behind us, who sang the carols real badly and off-key……well, that was a deadly combo.
Our pew would shake and vibrate as we’d turn purple trying to hold it in, while we quivered uncontrollably with suppressed guffaws.
As I got older, and decided that I no longer desired the loss of control, dirty looks, parental disapproval, and embarrassment – the “cure” I utilized was to FORCE my brain to focus on some very sad memory or thought….reliving the death of a beloved pet and how I felt that day was a reliable option…
That of course takes any sort of joy or fun out of the moment – but at least the urge to laugh is magically gone.
Yes, laughing in my sleep for the same reasons! When I was little my dad would wake me up to tell me I was laughing so loud it woke him up.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. . .
Fortunately, for me, I don’t have a problem with laughing at inappropriate times…which is especially good because I’m notorious for laughing hysterically for the smallest reasons (when I was a teenager, my dog sent me down to the floor holding my chest when he looked at me and cocked his head) and always have a s…illy grin on my face almost all the time. For me, life isn’t funny…it’s frecken’ hilarious! My big danger is that I habitually make smart a…lec comments and on a few occasions sent other people to the floor with breathing problems (recently, I “got” a friend a couple times while he was drinking a pop, and cause some choking. Hmm. Not good timing.)
The last time I was ROFLMAO? When I saw the pictures of the magic marker bandits. I saw their pictures and lost it for ten minutes. When I was finally able to regain my composure, I thought about was was waiting for them in lockup…and lost it for another fifteen.
I have two older sisters. At middle sister’s wedding, oldest sister (maid of honor) started to giggle. Oldest sister’s giggle always starts middle sister (bride) and me (bridesmaid) to giggling. I thought my mother was going to crawl under the pew.
Oh, god, this reminds me of how my daughter and I got a horrible fit of the giggles at my sister’s wedding. Here we are, in the front row, with the rest of the family, and my daughter and I both notice that the tail of the groom’s coat has a huge honking staple with a little paper tag in it – well, obviously a tag from the cleaners or something – and we begin to giggle. It was awful, we couldn’t stop, or stifle it – and every time I almost managed to, I could feel my daughter’s shoulder shaking against mine, and I’d be set off again. I can only hope that the people behind us thought we were overcome with emotion.
My sister and her husband, standing up in front of the minister could hear us, and they were going nuts wondering what had happened – had someone pranked them, somehow. Yeah, I think our mother wanted to crawl under a chair, too. Either that or kill my daughter and I.
In fairness to that beautiful bride, they kept cracking jokes that made her laugh even more.
Very funny video, though.
As for the laughing in your sleep, that is strange. I’m thinking you need a therapist or something. . .
Er . . . um . . .
Do you know any good ones?
My wife and I have video of me laughing at her during our wedding. She was wearing these ginormous fake eyelashes. You can see my eyes bug out when I first see them and then I can’t make eye contact with her without giggling. It snowballed from there.
She should have warned me about them before hand. I was shocked. It distracted me from the South Korean minister that said “mawwage”, the thing I was worried about laughing at.
I’m an Inappropriate Laugher.
With a sense of humor like that, they’ll be laughing just as hard at their 50th anniversary.
Couldn’t watch that without thinking of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwC361O13gk
The emotions in dreams are touched off fairly randomly by the waves of electrical impulses which soothe (reboot, reset, whatever) the brain, much as objects and events are. We will thus experience fear or sadness in the dream, but awake to find nothing especially fearful or sad going on.
This is not to say that there is nothing to learn or no meaning in dreams, but that this is more subtle than is usually thought. Even the psychoanalysts rely on fairly obvious and banal symbolisms which oversell their worth.
I saw someone have a completely bizarre laugh attack in NYC in 1990 during the big firework display over the East River. This big guy just became completely unhinged with hysterical laughter each time a firework went off. It was fascinating and extremely entertaining. I myself have had awful innapropriate laugh attacks, not as much as I used to, thank God. Once was at work when we were trying to stop the printer from printing out massive amounts of paper, no one could figure it out, and more and more IT people came running, and more and more paper just kept coming out. It was like a I Love Lucy episode, and I just lost it, no one else thought it was funny except my friend Russ who also lost it. It was embarrassing. I also laughed hysterically and couldn’t stop at a wedding where the couple said their own vows. The vows were pretty corny and it was silent I-can’t-breathe laughter. I was so upset with myself. I pray I don’t laugh at funerals.
I have occasionally suffered from inappropriate laughter, but I’ve never “dreamed” laughing so hard that I woke myself. I HAVE pinched the inside thin flesh of my wrist so hard that I left terrible bruises—to keep from laughing or to keep from crying (weddings AND funerals).
Julia NYC: Milan Kundera, one of my favorite authors, describes a funeral where the whole crowd gets hysterical with laughter in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
Here’s a later interview of the couple, but they only say a little about the wedding itself. They’re apparently Christians and were virgins when they married.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci6Bt90ggRw&feature=related
So interesting. I never figured you as a person with an outrageous sense of humor at all. Perhaps that’s because you’re a New Englander who displays it in more subdued ways.
I unfortunately find humor in almost everything and often show it. I have to subdue myself almost every day in some way on my blog from doing something I later consider too raucous.
Glad you laugh a lot, it’s manna for the soul.
Webutante: I’m a real knee-slapper. And remember, I spent my formative childhood years in New York City.
Remember, I spent my formative years in McMinnville, Tennessee….still I’m coming to think we might get along famously sitting next to one another at lunch in NYC…
Still I think I’m more irreverent than you about most worldly things….NA, na-na, NAAAAH, Na!
Gotcha last..
aunt’s wedding–81 or so, a cousin and aunt-in-law got up and sang that song from Ice Castles, I think. I had to bite my lip and grip my date’s hand to the point of pain to keep from laughing uncontrollably. My father’s side of the family has that affect on me. My mother’s mother used to laugh in her sleep–she used to have some real walloping screaming nightmares too.
If you are unfamiliar with the UK (*NOT* the excreble US rip-off) “Coupling”, this is referred to, quite appropriately and with a demonstration of sorts, as a “Giggle-loop”.
It’s a classic positive feedback mechanism whereby you are attempting to suppress an “inappropriate” laugh and it just keeps getting worse (positive feedback loops work that way).
What it really is is a failure of society to understand what laughter really is, which is not onlya response to something “funny” (i.e. totally unserious) but also a response to something deadly serious.
“There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them”
– Heisenberg –
As RAHeinlein put it, a laugh is the response of an interrupted defense mechanism. You laugh at some things as a mental defense from really, really facing down the most serious of things. And marriage, death, and so forth are among the very most serious. This is why a wake — a “death party” — isn’t disrespectful at all. It’s just humans whistling past the graveyard.
P.S., if you have not seen Coupling, it’s well worth watching. If you aren’t a fan of the show by episode four — “Inferno”, I’ll be quite surprised. (Note: it is frank, mature, and adult in its subject matter, which may not be appreciated by some, I grant. Just a warning). But the characters are very human and engaging, and the writing by creator Stephen (Doctor Who, series 5) Moffat is exceedingly witty.
Seems a rather common occurance among family members that only occassionally get together? Hmmmm
On a roadtrip to a funeral with my 4 sisters and a lady with an awful lisp comes up to my sister’s window and asked if she knew where the UPS office was. Except it sounded like dew-p-esssss and she had to say it like 3 three times before we could honestly understand what she meant.
We couldn’t stop ourselves. Incredibly embarrassing but funny as hell! We still crack up about it.
I hope she didn’t laugh that hard when he drop his draws on their honeymoon or it be a wery wery short marriage.
The very best wedding I ever attended the bride laughed so hard she couldn’t breath and had to squeek out her words, which made the occasion all the more hilarious. A lady sitting near me tried to mask her own laughter with a series of very unladylike snorts. It was great, I loved everyone moment of it.