The Best Medicine

“I can’t stop laughing.”

Nicole often says this when she’s posted a funny on her F***book page. Whether or not I get the joke, her statement always cheers me. The mental image of my dear poet friend doubled over and howling is a guaranteed smile. And if I happen to get the joke, I do the same thing.

I knew someone who once observed that crazy people don’t smile. If that’s true, then few truly crazy folks have crossed my path. Borderline is another story.

I’ve just survived another fiscal year end at work. It happens every year, and every year I warn my colleagues to beware, for I will lose my sense of humour in the crunch of balancing my budget to my forecast. In fact, it’s practically a given that anyone forced to manage financials on March 31 will do the same thing. I got through it okay this time (I think), but others lost their warmth and charm while struggling to get last-minute payments into a balky system before the books closed at midnight. We will recover. We always do. But man, it’s rough because it permeates life outside the office as well, and when that happens … grim barely begins to describe it.

I’m pretty sure that laughter is a gift that comes with us from before. I sincerely hope that we take it with us when we leave. I can’t imagine any sort of existence without it. I can’t imagine this existence without it, and I am extremely grateful for people who can make me smile or, better yet, laugh until my ribs ache. I appreciate a TV series that inspires one good belly laugh per episode (and it needn’t be a “comedy” series, either). A TV series that does it more than once per episode is gold. When a comic dies, like David Brenner, Robin Williams, and more recently, Garry Shandling, I sense the dimming of the world as a whole, because funny people make it a brighter place.

Laughs in literature are even more precious. Writing comedy is difficult. A lot of humour is in the delivery, so how do you make someone laugh at words on a page? It’s a gift, I tell you!

I was born into a group of very funny people. My sibs are each hilarious in his/her own fashion—even on a red-faced rant, my wee sister will crack me up with an unexpected turn of phrase. My brothers are wry and dry, and my older sister can tell a story with such wit that you remember it years later. And I’m pretty droll, myself. Even when a situation is impossibly contrary, I am able to inject some humour into it.

Except at fiscal year end.