Spontaneous giggles.
I’ve begun the pleasure of exchanging prompts with a charming friend, gentle soul, and seasoned writer whose work I greatly enjoy.
My prompt for her this week: The space of mind that your second favorite song takes you to.
Prepare to surge alive with the wind between your fingers. It’s a lovely read that welcomes you into your own mind and has you sit passenger side in her immersive imagery.
Her prompt for me: Describe in painful detail, and from beginning to end, what it feels like inside and out to be caught off guard by your own laughter.
While the most elaborate punchline can pull a deep, bellowing laugh from the depths of my stomach, it is only the third funniest thing in the world to me. In order to wave your comedic wand and turn me into a high-pitched hyena, you must first produce the second funniest thing in the world. Then, and only then, as I’m writing my will in anticipation of my early demise via squeaking giggles, can you force the most unsophisticated sound from my throat by hitting me with what I find to be THE funniest thing in the world.
What is the second funniest thing in the world to me?
Sudden, uncalled-for, and nonsensical rudeness.
My go-to memory of something along those lines was a conversation about a video game demo.
My longtime gaming group of over ten years was relaxing on a Saturday evening in our usual voice chat.
One of the guys is playing and streaming a demo of the upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake. At the very end, the credit screen shows up with the full game’s release date, just a week away.
Guy 1: “Damn. It’s coming out next week?”"
Guy 2: “Yeah, it’s right around the corner.”
Guy 1: “It’s right around YOUR MOM.”
I was playing my own game at the time with my feet kicked up on my desk. I don’t remember what the game was because there were more pressing matters: I suddenly went blind.
My spine grew hot. All the blood in my head rushed to the front. I felt like Megamind. I was certain my head was expanding rapidly. I skipped the dry chuckles and the hearty laughs to uncontrollably jump straight into hyena noises. My face scrunches up. It feels like it’ll never go back to normal.
My controller drops. I’m knocking shit over. My feet on the desk cause me to slide deeper into my chair. My head is where my lower back is supposed to be. My headset comes loose off my expanding head. All I can feel are hard bumps from my awkward flailing into whatever’s nearby and the hard slapping of my thigh.
Now, here’s the thing. My hyena laugh from the second funniest thing in the world makes the group laugh like crazy because they KNOW they got me on the ropes. That’s bad. Why? Because their laughing from my laughing makes me laugh harder.
The laughter goes on for a minute. Things die down. The blood in my forehead moves around a little. My head is swimming. We try to return to normalcy. Everyone’s quiet. A sudden guffaw from me kicks everything right back up and longtime brothers become dumb hyenas. This repeats at least six times.
Then, someone hits me with the funniest thing in the world: “Maxine, it’s not that funny.”
My already terrible posture in the chair worsens tenfold. The laughter folds me up into origami. High-pitched cackles are replaced by the primordial element of teehee. The notion of “stop” leaves my soul as I’m no longer able to. I’m sweating. I reach for my deodorant to reapply it. It’s a futile effort. I just knock more shit over.
The blood rushes to the BACK of my head this time. I can’t hear anything besides the invention of laughter when the world was just a swirling soup of tomfoolery and shenanigans. It was like listening to the ocean through a seashell, except the seashell was a clown nose.
I black out for several minutes. I regain consciousness from choking on my own giggles. I’m crying. I’m exhausted.
I excuse myself to go take a shower and get ready for bed. It’s barely 8:00 PM. There’s nothing to do but sleep after that.
Here lies Maxine. She died as she lived, clowning around.