Wherever it is you’re spending your summer, don’t forget to laugh!

W

hen I was in school, I had a problem. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have mostly pleasant memories of high school. I was blessed with phenomenal teachers and the most fun group of classmates. Nevertheless, I did have a problem. A pretty big problem. My problem was that I experienced frequent giggling spurts. I think I was a pretty mature student — why then, pray tell, did I go nuts if my teacher dropped her pen in the middle of a lesson? I can’t answer that, because I didn’t understand it myself. Honestly, I saw zero humor in a pen falling to the ground — zero — yet I was positively vibrating with laughter.

I used to dread these laughing attacks, because they were just plain embarrassing. I remember feeling resentful when my teachers would rebuke me for laughing, because I was a helpless victim to the laughter that would seize control of me. I vowed then that if one day I would be a teacher, I would never reprimand a student for having a laughing attack, no more than I would reprimand her for having a coughing fit. And what about in camp, you ask? Well in camp, laughter was pretty much part of the air we breathed, but there, too, I did run into some… let’s call them “issues.” Nothing a short apology couldn’t fix, but they were challenging moments nonetheless.

Baruch Hashem, I’ve mostly outgrown the problem. Except on rare occasions, uncontrollable laughing attacks are no longer a part of my life — and I can’t say I miss them very much. But looking back, it got me wondering about the science behind laughter. Hope all this fun stuff brings you more than a few laughs, but most importantly, wherever it is you’re spending your summer, don’t forget to laugh!