Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, April 2, 2003
HAVING THE LAST DISARMING LAUGH
EVEN the most hilarious joke ever told cannot sustain a laugh for very long. At some point we eventually have to stop. We laugh and laugh until we stop even though the joke remains just as funny. Unlike sad thoughts, which can still make us cry many years later, a joke can carry a laugh only so far. Laughability, it seems, wears off. It would be interesting to know at which point the funny button switches off and the laughter begins to drain away, and why? Because jokes rely on the element of surprise, repeated jokes are not funny because they are not surprising. The same tired jokes go around and around, especially on email, until they become infuriating. Not being a particularly funny person myself _ I cannot tell a joke, for example _ I try to compensate by having a sense of the ridiculous, which is not necessarily the same as having a sense of humour. The war on Iraq is ridiculous but not funny and, even more now, we still need a good laugh. I had to go to Sydney again recently and was originally booked on the 6.30am flight. However, on the previous day, Qantas rang to say the flight had been cancelled for some unspecified reason _ a lack of planes or passengers _ and I would have to catch the 6.05am flight instead. Great. Getting out of bed at 4.30am, I was not laughing. I was laughing even less when the Qantas checkin woman said they had been unable to contact all the passengers on the 6.30 flight to advise them of the cancellation, and therefore the 6.05 would be delayed by 10 minutes to await them. As she was confiding this to me, over the public address system came the announcement: ``Because of operational requirements, the flight to Sydney has been delayed 10 minutes.'' Operational requirements? Don't make me laugh. The woman gave me a sickly, apologetic grin and rolled her eyes. I laughed. The delay became 15 minutes and then another 5, by which time it was almost 6.30 and I was chuckling mirthlessly, if not exactly belly laughing, and rubbing the sleep from my eyes. In Sydney that evening, I went to a Chinese restaurant that served fortune cookies. With a thrill of anticipation, out fell a slip of paper that read: ``This insert has a protective coating.'' Thinking safe sex, I laughed. The other side read: ``People will believe most anything that is whispered to them.'' Very true. The act of laughing is said to have many health benefits, from strengthening the immune system, to creating a sense of spiritual exhiliration, to raising the level of endorphin, a natural painkiller. The other wonderful thing about laughter is its power to create tension in your enemies who do not know why you are laughing. Laugh and enjoy the confusion on their faces. Also, it must be nigh impossible to shoot someone when you both are laughing. What a shame the inventories of chemical weapons do not contain laughing gas which could be sprayed across the battlefield and, falling about helplessly, all hostility would end in hilarity.
