Who makes you laugh the most?

Grant still can make me laugh my head off

I know I shouldn’t have laughed, but I couldn’t help myself. Immediately after she led the group in singing a reverent song, a woman at church walked down the aisle and slugged her husband as she passed by. Obviously, something was understood between them. From my point of view, the irony was enough to have me laughing throughout the prayer that followed.

Laughing, even at the most inappropriate times, can feel so good. It cleanses the soul. It makes us feel alive. That's why, consciously or subconsciously, we continually seek out people who make us laugh, and we look for moments to make others laugh.

Recently my son Mark asked me, “Who’s the funniest person you know?” but a better question would have been, “Who makes you laugh the most?” According to Dr. Robert Provine, Ph.D., “Contrary to folk wisdom, laughter is not about humor; it is about relationships between people.” In other words, laughter is a social affair. If you don’t believe me, then think about the last text message or IM chat that made you laugh. Did you type “LOL” or a simple “hahaha” to make sure the other person knew you caught the humor? Though perhaps a little too generic, those expressions are some of our paltry ways of trying to both communicate and share laughter from afar.

Our drive to laugh dictates more than we probably realize.

• We retell the same family stories laced with humor.
• We read the comics, hoping to chuckle at something.
• We forward funny emails.
• We watch America’s Funniest Videos and our favorite sitcoms.
• We ask friends for recommendations for funny movies.
• We call people we can count on for a good belly laugh.
• We share funny YouTube videos gone viral.
• We pay people good money to make us laugh.
• We capture audiences with funny stories or jokes.
• We tickle our babies and play hide-n-seek with them, never tiring of their fresh, spontaneous laughter.

It never took much to make our son Grant laugh. He was born silly. From the time he learned to talk, he could imitate accents, repeat verbatim long strings of dialogue from movies, and sing lyrics to songs he’d memorized effortlessly. He also was given an innate ability to express volumes with his body language. One of our favorite funny family memories is a time when he was less than ten years old, and he swaggered around the room shirtless, singing the words to “I’m Too Sexy” while whipping his shirt around in circles over his head. Funnier still was watching him run away from Ken who tried to put a stop to his little act. 

Grant has always been able to make us laugh at the most inopportune times. One time was particularly funny. Ken was on the phone with Mr. Important Person, and Grant picked up another receiver and flushed the toilet, and we all bust out laughing . . . Well, all of us except for Ken. 

That’s just how it works: honest laughter is spontaneous. It can’t be faked and often can’t be restrained. As Provine says, genuine “laughter . . . simply bubbles up from within us in certain situations,” revealing as much about our relationships as it does about us personally. If this is true, then maybe how often we share honest laughs with people is an accurate measure of how genuine our relationship is with them. In that case, I think I’ll go find a true friend and laugh my head off. Then I can use an acronym new to me: “ROFL” (Rolling On Floor Laughing).