Laughter is truly an amazing thing. You can't describe the sound of it, not like you can describe the rev of a motorcycle or a door opening. If someone was deaf, there would never be words to describe what laughter sounds like. It's just . . . laughter.
I love to laugh. Getting in a really good laugh is like getting in a really good cry; you feel so much better afterwards. Like someone refreshed oxygen into your system. When you see me, I am usually laughing. The smallest things can set me off, and once I get going, it's hard to stop, as I'm sure many of you have learned over the years in your own lives.
I remember laughing my way through everything. All of my finest memories involve laughter of some kind. Laughter . . . it does something to us. After we laugh, we feel happy, free, we appreciate life. Oh, how good it feels to laugh, not caring how stupid you look or sound, just to laugh.
All of you know I can't get through an article without bringing my own thoughts and past into it somehow. It was the thought that really inspired this article. Sixth grade, I think it was. I had just moved to a new school a few months before, and my newly found friends were slowly learning things about me. Like my laughing problem, for instance. About 10 of us were sitting around the lunch table (I know many of my stories start out like this. Go with me, here.) and I had just started a fit of a laughter over something one of my friends had said. As he continued on, that fit turned into rollicking laughter and tears sprang to the corners of my eyes. Very soon, I was crying and laughing at the same time. And they were sitting there, staring at me blankly, until one of them said. "Are you okay, Em?" This sobered me up. "What do you mean?" I had replied, catching my breath. "You're crying." Patrick said. This surprised me. "You've never laughed until you've cried before?" I asked. More stares. "Well, you need to learn sometime," and I motioned for Patrick to start his story again.
Yet, I don't know how you exactly learn to laugh. It seems to come naturally to all of us. Do you remember the first time you laughed? Your parents do. Most of us were likely babies. What do you think induced that first laugh? Our brains probably couldn't translate something very funny into full throttle laughter yet, but maybe it started as a smile. And smiling turned into laughter. Or maybe it was a tickle, or the lick of a dog's tongue. Laughter still comes from those things to this day, along with so many more.
I think it really shows a lot about a person, how much they laugh. Even how much they smile. Sense of humor is always important, and my friends and I have no limit of it. I love watching little children play. They always, always laugh. Laughing is their nature. As we grow older, we continue laughing . . . yet not as much. It takes a very special adult to laugh as much as teenagers do, and it takes a special teenager to laugh like when we were children. How much happier do you think people would be of they laughed a little bit more?
No one can really say exactly what laughter sounds like. It's different for every person. But I think we agree that laughter is really the truest sound of joy and happiness. The purest form of getting what we feel in our hearts out to other people. To share that feeling. To laugh.
Glitsygrl
