The Daughter of Laughter & Chaos
My Journey With Laughter — from weapon to survival skill
Text Version revised:
Many of us have somewhere in an old photo album, attic storage box, or just in our memory, an image from our babyhood, and a time when we began demonstrating important early survival skills. Skills such as Sitting Up and Laughing. We all understand the importance of developing the ability for independent movement, but laughter, not so much.
By the time I started doing those things, my father was dead, the cancer that would kill my grandmother was already eating through her body, and my mother was spending her nights listening to Pat Boone’s My Special Angel — crying and wondering what would become of us. Our lives seemed doomed to chaos. It had been my mother’s companion for many years, a small hungry animal demanding to be fed. Over the years, that Chaos would grow into a huge dragon, whose teeth could both smile and bite, and in whose mouth was both fire and laughter.
But, as a baby, I knew none of this, and just kept on laughing and smiling with everyone.
And eventually, my mother remarried and soon there were three of us girls. My sisters and I grew up learning that laughter, however, is a two edged sword, and can be used as a weapon.
Most of my life I heard this: “If you had a brain, you’d be dangerous.” It was said with a smirk, if not an outright laugh. It was a “clever” referral to my nickname: The Brainless Wonder. This was humor and laughter being used as a weapon — to belittle, demean and control me.
I grew up feeling that all laughter was being directed at me. Junior high was an especially terrible time as I tried to balance leaving childhood with being a parent to both my sisters and my mother. I found comfort in music, my transistor radio, and wanted to sing. But being forced to record my voice for everyone to laugh at was torture.
The most uproarious joke was making me sing a song that included the lyric: “And when I die…” then being interrupted by “With a voice like that, you’re dead already.”
I truly understand it when I hear others talk about how incidents that revolve around weaponized laughter burn into your brain. Because they burned into mine.
It was a caring music teacher that helped me learn that there was healing power in laughter while I was learning the clarinet, bass clarinet and baritone saxophone. I played in, and sang with, the High School jazz band. I spent my entire senior year studying satire and humor in literature and starting writing humor myself.
Meanwhile, My mother’s chaos took the form of alcoholism and it enveloped the whole family in terror, shame, confusion and resentment. I left home at age 18, with only my pocketbook. Eventually I would make enough of a peace to continue helping my sisters, as the three of us stumbled into adulthood.
The shadow of the chaos was always there, influencing family dynamics, marriages, and the raising of the next generation. It would ultimately consume both my mother and my stepfather, and threatened to eat my sisters and me as well.
In the years since their deaths, both laughter and chaos continued to make regular visits. My children and I laughed long and loud, especially when in the car traveling back and forth to their activities. But they were subjected to the pain, anger and confusion caused by the contentious divorce between me and their father, and the difficult years of survival that came after that.
I tried very hard to embrace the idea expressed by Nietzsche: you need chaos in yourself to give birth to a dancing star, and I considered my children those stars.
I didn’t realize how much laughter had bonded and helped us until my nephew told his mother that he liked me because I was always smiling. I realized that our dance teacher’s mantra to always “keep moving and keep smiling” was an instruction for life, not just performance.
But, it wasn’t until 2010 that I found out the laughter I learned as a baby, the laughter that chaos tried to take from me, and the laughter that comforted me, my sisters and my children had real physical & psychological benefits, and a growing body of science to back that up.
I’ve now studied laughter as a survival skill, well being practice and social bonding tool. I’ve become a student of Happiness, what it is, where it comes from, why we need it, and how we find it. Finally, I was able to put The Brainless Wonder to rest by helping others laugh for the health of it. I’m not a comedian, but we can find the funny together. And that is a survival skill.
Take that, Chaos.
