Why I Laugh

My sister and I received a sweet e-mail from our mom recently. (I didn’t ask my mom's permission to share it because I’m the baby in the family and we get away with these kinds of things.)

Mom wrote: "I love you guys! I just feel like I need to tell you all that today for some reason.  I'm being emotional.  But I love my family so much and you girls and your husbands are so great, I just want you to know how much I love you!”

Here’s my reply:

“Leah and Mom, This e-mail was very timely. I wanted to tell you both something. I got some test results from my doctor yesterday and they aren’t good. I mean really not good.

Just kidding. I love you, too.”

Humor is a very complicated and wonderful enigma. It brings some people together and divides others, it relieves tension or causes it, it makes most people laugh but there are always the few who end up confused or upset. But above all, humor makes an incredible shield and a fun coping strategy.

How do you cope with the hard things in life? Do you drink too much? Self-medicate with illegal or prescription drugs? Impulsively shop? Compulsively clean? Compulsively hoard? Do you play a cute little game of make-believe with your life? Work out like Jane Fonda on crack? (I’m sure there is a more relevant illustration of a fitness guru, but I’m a stranger to the culture of “exercise.”) We all have some way of coping. Every single one of us.  Now, there are many people who are perfectly stable, knowing how to deal with the stresses of life in a healthy, normal way.

Just kidding. There aren’t.

One of the things that annoy me more than anything else in this world is having to explain myself. So please, let me explain myself: I make jokes. It’s just what I do. I instinctively find humor in everything because of the heart-breaking despair in most things.

I am about to compare myself to Steve Martin. I know, I know—it’s like Kim Kardashian comparing herself to Mother Theresa, but just hear me out. In his autobiography, “Born Standing Up,” he describes a brutal beating his dad inflicted on him when he was 9 years old. And how it ruined their relationship for the next 30 years. Steve (I pretend we’re on a first-name basis) writes, "I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know… I am qualified to be a comedian." 

If you look, you will find a hundred examples of comedians with similar stories. Bob Newhart said, “I think there’s some trauma, probably, in a comedian’s background, or upbringing that this is the way we compensate for it.” The funnier the comedian, the more painful the past. Please know I am not calling myself a comedian, but merely saying that I relate to their methods.

There is a reason people spend their lives being funny.

I have reasons for making jokes. And I don't need to explain them. 

If I don’t laugh about life, I will spend large portions of my day sobbing hysterically. Who wants to see that? Who wants to do that? And so I joke. The security-blanket-like protection it offers is just a cool bonus.

When my second step-mother swallowed a bottle of Xanax and hurled us into the horrific aftermath of suicide, humor (what little I could find) is what made the whole disaster manageable. And my sisters allowed me to make jokes when most people would’ve labeled me insensitive. The fact is, I am so overly-sensitive I don’t know how to deal with that much emotion.

You can sympathetically shake your head, and say “you poor thing, I’m glad I don’t do that.” And I will reply, “You probably don’t. But you do something.”

Speaking of replies…Here’s Leah’s response to my e-mail:

“You are an ass.  I mean really an ass!” 

A few minutes later I received a follow-up e-mail from her:

“...I cannot believe it.  I almost ran out the door and down Martin Way.  That was so scary.  I just knew it was cancer and you were gonna be gone by your birthday.”

I still haven’t heard from my mom.