Hannah's Random Thoughts #7: Why I Laugh

I really love laughing.

I believe there are 3 general categories of how I laugh (other than a typical haha):

-While running
-With happy tears
-When trying to hold it in

Picture a group of runners, about eight, say, all looking very serious, 3 or 4 abreast running down a trail. Then, a few paces behind is a girl looking back with an embarrassed and annoyed expression. She is looking back at another girl who has several meters of separation between herself and the group. This particular girl is doubled over in laughter, her "heehees" trailing behind her, as her head lolls about her shoulders with an expression of pure insanity across her face. (That girl is me, if you can't tell. And the one looking back would be Sarah.)

One of the best (and worst) times you can laugh is on a run. Sometimes I'll be running and I just have this huge urge to laugh. It's so much fun and so terrible at the same time, because somehow it makes it funnier when you are just laughing your head off behind all the other runners, and then it's kind of awkward after a while. And it also feels like you've done about 100 sit-ups.

My running-laugh is really odd, too, which makes it even more awkward. It is usually really repetitive and weak-sounding, since I'm all out of breath from having to run and laugh at the same time. ("Ha ha ha heeheehee..... Ha ha ha ha heeheehee!.... HA HA ha heeheehee!!!...") I can't ever really tell if the other runners are weirded out when it happens... I sound sort of crazed. (Interjection from Sarah: They ARE weirded out.)

I also love getting to the point when you cry because you laugh so hard. It's a nice when you wipe away tears as you gasp to catch your breath. Proof of your investment in an emotion.

Then there's the good ol' hold-in-every-breath-because-this-is-a-situation-where-you-shouldn't-laugh-anymore type of laugh. This usually happens if I pick up on something sort of late, or else we all laughed about it for a while and I still think it's funny, or it's something subtle that most people didn't notice but you and your one friend are trying to supress the giggles. Sarah and I call this, "Internal Chaos".

But overall, I think laughing is just dandy. Here's some funny stories that make me laugh: (most of these have to do with Sarah)

The Picture
Being a twin has it's odd moments. One of these moments occurred when I was trying to take a picture of Sarah on an iPad. I started to get the camera ready and she grinned, ready for her close up. I opened up the camera app, and, to my annoyance, she had stopped smiling. I just wanted to get the silly picture taken, so I took my eyes off the screen to tell her to smile.... but she was. I glanced back at the screen. Again, Sarah wasn't smiling. As I opened my mouth to say "Can you smile?!?" I realized I had been looking at myself through the front-facing camera but I had just thought it was Sarah. We laughed about it for a long time.

The Bubble-in-the-Throat
So, it just happens that we were going to watch Monsters, Inc. with our cousins. Sarah was feeling like, I don't know... conversation should be started while the previews were still going. She was going to ask if our cousins liked Mike or Sully better, but she only got as far as "Um, so, do you guys," when all three of us (me and our two cousins) looked at her with our eyes wide with a mixture of humor and confusion. Sarah had a ginormous, massive bubble in her throat that made her "Um, so, do you guys," quite funny. To this day I have continue to tease her about it.

The Arm
(Why are all these stories about Sarah!?!) When Sarah and I were little, we were sitting at a table in our playroom with our arms in the middle of the table alternating (Like Sarah left arm, Hannah left arm, Sarah right arm, Hannah right arm). Sarah got mad at me or was feeling silly or something, and she wanted to draw a smiley face on my arm. But she got confused with the amount of arms on the table, (four was a big number back then!), and she drew a blue smiley face on her arm. I escaped unmarked.

The First Drive
The first time I drove by myself, I just did a short drive to a neighborhood up the street. I guess I was feeling all nervous and only focusing on the road, because as I continued down the street to come home, I thought, "Wow... seems like I should have passed our driveway by now..." and I looked out the window as I saw our driveway flash by. But I was going 35mph, folks, and I had no time to stop and turn! After a brief application of the brakes and a heavy bout of laughter all alone in the car, I managed to turn around and make it back home. But I just kept laughing at myself and thinking "You missed the driveway! You missed the driveway!"

Hannah's Random Thoughts #6: Running Lightly

I generally consider myself a fairly quiet runner. I find it almost disruptive when someone's footsteps hit the trails with the same thunk thunk. With quiet feet, the pattern is varied and  changes from inaudible pat-pat-pats to the soft crunch of leaves under my shoe. And I think it's cool when you can be in the forest undetected if you so choose...like a hobbit! :)

I remember reading Hunger Games -I think it was the first one- and I can still remember Katniss' annoyance at Peeta's clumsiness in the woods. After that when Sarah and I went up in our woods or ran somewhere trail-y I tried to Katni-fy my steps. It was kind of fun.

Running lightly makes you feel like a spy or a hobbit or... like you know all parts of the trail with your eyes closed.

Hannah's Random Thoughts #5: Textbooks

As I was reading my chapter for AP US history, I was thinking.... What if the school gave out DVDs of textbooks, and a nice voice read out all of the text (maybe in a British accent!! I find reading in Professor Snape's voice helps me memorize) as the screen showed accompanying images or maybe the text also on screen. 

Then it wouldn't take as long to read and then copy down, you can copy down as you listen! And then at the end of each chapter it ran over the highlights again. It *would* be more difficult to study at school due to less access to a tv, etc, but along with the normal textbook it might be helpful.

 I don't know. Just some genius I thought of as I was doing my homework.

Hannah's Random Thoughts #4: Facebook

I was just thinking what if Facebook had a little meter and it timed how long you were on Facebook? I wonder how quickly you would start to rack up days/months/years(?) (hopefully not!!) and then how people would feel about seeing "So-and-so has spent 6 months on Facebook" on their home feed. I think it would make people go on less. Or at least I would probably go on Facebook less.

 And what if we were "sentenced" by Facebook to spend all that much time AGAIN on facebook consecutively... like in a room with only facebook to be on for, say, 6 months. No sleeping. No real interactions with people in real life. No eating. (Ok, you can eat.) 

I'm not saying I'm quitting my facebook or anything, (Don't worry folks, I'll still be there to entertain you!! ) I just think that people would lose interest in Facebook pretty and really see how addictingly-boring it is.

Hannah's Random Thoughts #3: Dreaming

Ok, as many of you know, I love dreaming. I love dreams. It's so weird when you start to think about it, because it's almost more of a "you" brain than when you're conscious, because there's none of those distractions of everyday life and it's just your own brain having it's own ideas and not being interrupted. 

I have noticed over time that the small things that you don't really "have time to think about" in real life are usually the topics in your dream. The eraser that broke in 2nd period might be your pillow in your dream (that was a made up example). The random man you might have seen in a grocery store suddenly becomes your uncle (the uncle part was true). It's just odd. 

So really, if those ideas that you don't have enough time for in real life are the things you really focus on in your dreams maybe the real you is in your dream.... o_o wow. Isn't that weird?!

Hannah's Random Thoughts #2: Perspective

Isn't perspective weird? I mean, take a sandwich for instance. We have a slice of bread or too, some cheese and some meat and call it a sandwich. If you were just snacking on a piece of bread and then ate three slices of cheese and then popped some meat into your mouth, you'd probably not think of it as a meal, but suddenly when you stack them all up it's decent enough even though separately your stomach would still have the same amount of food in it.

I don't know. Just some thoughts as I research for a Mock Trial.

Hannah's Random Thoughts #1: Harry Potter

So the other day I was thinking about all the Harry Potter pins on Pinterest that say "we are the potter generation" and how it's kinda cheesy but true, and then I was thinking how what if schools 50 years from now read that book for some project but it's considered like a fiction classic or something awesome, and if the kids will like it or hate it because they have to read it.

 And then what if years from now people from nowadays will always say quotes from Harry Potter, and then what if they become as things that we say all the time like "out of the frying pan, into the fire" but instead we would say things like, "you're going to get yourselves killed, or worse, expelled!" When our kids do something foolish. And we'll try to say it in a Hermione voice but it just won't be the same. And then overtime people will be like "what's that from?" And then I'll say, "THAT'S FROM HARRY POTTER!!!" 

And then we'll have some great conversation and then we will watch them or read them again and the magic will live on.....