Street Level

I’m not a funny person. I’d like to be funnier — or at least write funny once in a while.
I seem to be always surrounded by reporters who not only see the humour in situations — they can write about them that makes even me giggle.
Which is an accomplishment because, as I said, I’m not a funny person.
It would be really neat to be able to write like entertainment reporter Mikelle Sasakamoose or the boss, Christopher Foulds.
They’re funny.
Danna Johnson, our former entertainment reporter, still makes me laugh with her new blog of views on life around her. (It’s at http://mindcandyjuice.blogspot.com/. Check it out. The woman’s got a warped view of the world.)
Anyhow, Pat diFrancesco got me thinking about laughter when she sent out an invitation to a Feb. 22 gathering of women, the sole purpose of which is “to laugh!!”
DiFrancesco asked me if I wanted to attend. It might be an interesting experiment, since my children say I have no sense of humour at all, while my husband says I try to hard to be funny — and fail every time.
After all, the e-mail says the event “is a laughing matter.”
It says to come down if “you think you are funny, people tell you that you are hilarious, you look funny (OK, maybe that qualifies me), you have an infectious laugh (KTW photographer Dave Eagles says it’s a scary one) or you can’t stop the giggling.”
Apparently, humour has been making the news these days.
Down in the U.S., the media, not one to normally show a sense of humour when covering political events, went wild when would-be president Hillary Clinton answered the question “What in her background equips her to deal with evil and bad men” with nothing more than a look at the audience.
Yes, that kind of look.
Everyone laughed and it’s been fodder for many columns since, all once again talking about the wackiness of the Clinton marriage.
Perhaps the Washington power duo take their funny cue from that bastion of humour, Friedrich Nietzsche, who once said, “You must laugh 10 times during the day and be cheerful; otherwise, your stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb you in the night.”
I’m sure Bill has caused Hillary more than one gut pain.
Everyone knows laughter is good for you, maybe the best medicine. Reader’s Digest has been mining that statement for decades.
But now, a study in the International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine says that people who are dealing with severe diseases have a better survival rate if they laugh, an improvement of as much as 31 per cent, the researchers say.
Another study, published in Motivation and Emotion, says that laughter also improves relationships. Something about reminiscing about when you did laugh, sharing that memory with your significant other and you both bond in the remembrance.
Yet another study — and this one I really like — says laughter helps you lose weight.
Published in the International Journal of Obesity (of course), the researchers say that if you giggle for 15 minutes a day, you can lose up to five pounds during a year.
Now that’s funny.
There’s even something called laughter yoga, which boggles the mind because yoga practitioners are supposed to chant, aren’t they?
And look serene?
Apparently, this combines yogic breathing with laughter, and it’s been featured in a lot of different publications, from the Financial Times to National Geographic.
My friend Darla Gray does her bit to teach me humour. She’ll send me the funniest jokes, ones that — yes, family, pay attention here — I laugh at. I just never seem to be able to remember them correctly, or tell them to anyone without blowing the punchline.
So let me leave you with the most recent joke to interrupt a family dinner. As expected, it has political roots, coming from the mouth of federal Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.
It goes like this:
Dion: “Have you heard the shortest bedtime story?”
Interviewer’s reply: “No.”
Dion: “It’s called Bam The Dog. A car goes by. Bam, the dog! Now go to sleep.”
Apparently this isn’t an animal cruelty joke. And the fact I thought it was made the boys laugh even harder.
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Posted by Dale at 11:06 a.m. Comments