For those of you who signed up to my e-course From Burnout to Brilliant
when it was first launched, it's all about Fun and Laughter this week.
If you've come on board more recently and have a bit further to go,
look out for Step 9, but don't feel you have to wait – there's always a
good time for fun.
When writing this module a phrase came to mind – Bare-Arsed Fun, which
I believe I first came across thanks to Marion Ryan (coach, mentor,
friend and plenty more besides) so I decided to do some surfing on her
blog Wryvita. To my surprise, not only did I find that she had sneaked
in a mention of me, in the same post she also talks about laughter –
how spooky is that?!
Marion asks, "What makes you laugh? I mean really, I want to know."
So here goes. I must say, none of it's particularly clever, but I guess it goes to show "Laughter is an orgasm triggered by the intercourse of sense and nonsense." ~Author Unknown
7 things which make me laugh out loud
- People – fun, upbeat and cheeky people, and the ultimate has to be my son Oliver, whether he's doing a funny dance with a bin upside down on his head "bein' a Wobot" or gazing at the mirror admiring his tribal war paint impression achieved with one humble lipstick.
- Adrenaline plus oxygen – doing something active and preferably outdoors. My memories of white water rafting are fantastic, but failing that, my aptitude of cycling straight into trees makes me (and others) laugh, so I guess laughing at my own misfortune works too.
- Music and dancing – my clubbing tastes used to span quite a range, from R&B to cheesy 70s nights to moshing to Nirvana. When it comes to laughability, I say taste is not an issue. Just turn the volume up, let your hair down and go wild.
- Bad jokes – so terrible I'm not even going to mention them here. But I'm sniggering as I type…
- Funny books, of which there are never enough – the most recent one that comes to my mind is Douglas Coupland's All Families are Psychotic
- Watching adults play games that revert them to childhood – Monopoly and Scrabble are my old favourites, recently joined by the Nintendo Wii. I simply could not stop chuckling at my husband and brother in law playing Wii boxing.
- Sharing someone else's excitement and celebration – grinning, whooping, squealing and cheering – works every time and one of the reasons why I love being a coach
How about you? What makes you laugh? Yes really, I want to know.
Grace
In that Wry Vita blog post of mine you mentioned, I said “what I’m really looking for is the sort of laughter that makes you think you might choke if you can’t stop for a gasp of air pretty quickly.”
I had just one of those moments on Thursday when I almost referred – in a very large well-read forum – to a client of mine as a “Sheila”.
Not that she is a Sheila, but I was writing about an Australian affiliate scheme at the time and the word just fell out of my fingers. In this age of political correctness gone potty, I imagine there might have been some fall-out if my finger had found the ‘send’ button before my brain re-activated.
Half the forum would have tutted and put a mental black cross through their mental diary entry “Get Marion to design my blog” and the other half would have loved and forgiven me anyway because they wouldn’t have bothered opening a post with Marion Ryan’s name on.
My sense of humour has got me into trouble so often I’m sometimes tempted to put it away for a very rainy day but on this occasion, as I only had to imagine, rather than experience, PC people’s reactions, I laughed disproportionately long and loud.
And kept on laughing till I thought I’d choke. My only witnesses were the animals who were looking at me with that worried look in their eyes I’m starting to see more often since I spent more and more time in lonely isolation.
This story is SO not funny to anyone but me that I tried – and failed – to blog about it but the memory keeps coming back to me.
I can’t really explain what was funny. I’m sure Sheila is one of the least offensive, least politically incorrect racial terms but there would still likely be someone – Sheila or not – sufficiently offended to want to sue me for all my worldly goods – a dog, an Ipod and some asparagus tips past their sell-by date.
It’s especially heartening though to realise that I can experience gut-throbbing, air-gasping bouts of laughter with no more resources than me and my ‘nonsense’ of humour.
Marion x
One of the funniest things that has me laughing with tears running down both my face and legs are when me and my daughter go off on a wild dance in the house to a crazy piece of music.
We fall about doing the most stupid movements