Saturday, September 21, 2013

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!"

No comments:

Post a Comment