There is a really cute petite lady who meets with me everyday by way of work. She is not very verbose, in fact she is what you call “strong and silent” if you could ignore the “strong” part. She smiles very often but it’s her rare laugh that made me write this post.
I have only read of tinkling laughter, hers actually reminds you of silvery bells and an utter joy without strings, akin to that of a baby’s, when it finds some fuzzy yet brightly colored object at its span.
Also, it is such a feminine sound, that the air suddenly charges up with the auras of all the alpha males in the vicinity, who turn around to what their instinct says is a girl they can potentially protect in the warmth of their caves.
Yes, all that can be packaged in a laugh. I see the effects. I report.
There is this air of cordiality and innate genial conversation sparks off or continues after the amiable sound is emitted.
I laugh too. It may seem like fiction, considering the trend of my posts, but I assure you. I do laugh. But my laughter is as similar to my colleagues as day is to night. And of the appeal I shall refrain from speaking about, but will let you guess by referring the statement made by a certain boy in 2004, when he said, “My God, you laugh like the Devil”.
The true context to understand the gravity of this comment can be set, when I tell you that this boy spent his extra time looking up the “Apocalypse” and “End of the world”etc. in Google. Also, he had quite a bit of extra time.
So it would be safe to say, I barely escaped being doused in Holy Water for exercising my laughter muscles.
There is a dish of a boy (Yes, women objectify men too) who once told me that laughter should come from the heart and not from the throat. See what you can get away with when you are buff and trim enough to steal focus from your words? Had a normal dude even tried that very quotable quote, he definitely would have had to deal with my “Devil” laughter ringing in his ears for what we’ll call an extended period of time.
But we will try to not digress from the topic too much. Yeah, so my laughter is not the gentle sound that one would associate from a tender vocal cord situated in a suitably appealing throat. I have more of the “Belly” laugh, even deeper than the “Heart” suggested by the Softie-with-muscles. If I find anything funny, which seemed more frequent in the past, I laugh without restraint, without poise, grace and good manners.
And almost all of the time, there is someone to “Shush” me immediately. That pisses me to no end.
From experience, let me tell you this; listening to a person’s genuine laugh is probably the most positively therapeutic experience next to you laughing genuinely yourself. And if you feel that you cannot bear to hear another’s joy or amusement, then maybe you have gone a little too much into the dark side.
You know who is worse than a laugher-stifler a.k.a Shusher? A Fake laugher.
There is something horribly evil about people who act their laugh out.
Those are the people who are likely to rent a couple of cherubic children and an elderly grandmother to accompany them during “Family Day” at office. Nothing they say or do can be considered original.
My having become a grownup, a point of intense disagreement from my mother’s perspective, is illustrated by the fact that I smile “coldly” now. Apparently I have learnt the art of varying the degree of warmth in my smile like a good cook can control his oven temperature…and I am told that of late, the cook is dishing out sub-zero meals. A cold smile is much worse than a no smile, it seems. And it is usually the precursor to a “harsh” laugh- a sound that is a remote cousin of our nearly extinct genuine laugh. A harsh laugh is to show anger or contempt. A more evolved version of a low growl and a bite in the jugular. Needless to say I am pretty good at that too.
Finally there is the point of why the laugh? Is the laugh “with” or “at” the audience?
I am told, by the same experts who’s opinions I have been generously sprinkling all over this post, that it is quite rude to laugh at someone, especially under the circumstance where that someone is in a laughable state. Hmmm….so all those thousands of years of slapstick comedy- when a guy (preferably rotound and not attractive) lands on his backside with the maximum pain inflicted on his person as a result of his unfortunate encounter with the strategically placed banana peel, is actually indicative of mankind’s very malevolent nature.
As far as I am concerned, it is only indicative of a less than evolved instinct of amusement. War and violence is evil.
Laughing with people, most often than not, is a white lie way of saying a that you are laughing at some unfortunate but you have the company of your equally dastardly mates.
So no amount of spit and polish will make that phrase shine.
They say it takes more muscles to frown than to smile and laughter clubs propagate the rabidly hysterical version of a belly laugh (which makes it quite creepy) to keep the heart and mind young (here we go again).
So just laugh when you can and while you can.
There is enough in the world to put you down and when a laugh is sounded, it is the defiant call that one may be down but not out. It is very simply the sound of life.
Your funny valentine,
Rain
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