LOL

 Laughter is weird.

 

When you think about it, isn’t it odd that human beings, to show amusement at something, make a repetitive semi-ululating sound in our throats?  I sometimes wonder who came up with it, and how it caught on… it seems so entirely random.  And yet it’s instinctive: babies rapidly pick up on the sound as they mimic the sounds made by those caring for them, and on it goes from there.

 

There are few things more wonderful than shared laughter.  That moment when you and another, or others, are amused at the same things.  Jonathan Coe, one of my favourite recent novelists, wrote about the moment of sheer wellbeing when you’re sitting in your living room watching a tv programme, such as the famous Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special, and you’re laughing at it, and you realise that millions of others are also laughing, in their houses, throughout the land.  And over time, as well: it’s wonderful to re-watch something from childhood and laugh at it over again… possibly, for me, something like Fawlty Towers evokes all the nostalgia of one of the first things I found really amusing on tv, and the tears of laughter which I wipe away have a little bit of remembrance of times past as well.

 

Sitting in a theatre or a cinema, with everyone chuckling at the play or the comedian or the film, creates such a warm feeling of happy wellbeing.  Of course, I might often be that one awkward person who doesn’t find it funny, but even then, I get the feeling of community that ripples through a venue full of laughter.  The laugh track on a tv show can never capture it.  I often find that harsh, percussive and off-putting: the aural equivalent of a floor manager holding up a LAUGH sign for the audience to obey.  I remember nights out with friends and colleagues, pre-pandemic, when laughter rippled around a napkin-and-glass-strewn dinner table, as stories were told and anecdotes shared.  I remember looking around at all of those present, their faces spotlit by candles and glowing with entertainment, and thinking, this is good, this is friendship, comradeship, and this is how it’s meant to be.  That weird sound we all make at the bases of our throats can break down barriers and forge close bonds.  

 

And then there’s shared laughter with just one person: your best friend, your partner, someone in your family.  That’s magical.  Picture it: you’re talking to your best friend on the phone.  You’re sharing a funny story- maybe something from your shared past.  You both know the script but you both end up laughing helplessly.  Tears are wiped away on both ends of the phonecall, and, somehow, you’re even closer afterwards than you were before.  Or your partner, or someone in your family:  you have some kind of nightmare situation- some domestic or extended family malfunction- and you end up lost for words, your only utterances a gasped out laugh, perhaps mingled with an oath, and you both collapse into a helpless hysteria of laughing.  That’s magical.  You’re bonded, and you’ll remember it forever.

 

I try to use laugher in my classroom: I’ve joked, from time to time, that I sometimes try to get my students to learn without them realising they’re doing so.  It’s not as flippant as that, but there is a kind of strategy at work.  I try to break down the barriers of teenage ‘attitude’, of lack of confidence, of boredom, of alienation from aspects of the subject, of people having a bad day or simply feeling uncomfortable with the structured situation, by working out what amuses a class or an individual, and weaving that into the stories I create around a text, a topic or an exercise.  When I’m teaching grammar, I try to make my examples a bit outlandish.  When it’s a spelling test, I might attempt to incorporate a pun (my third years liked my recent definition of the word abundance – 'a waltz for cakes'- and don’t worry, I also told them what it really meant).  If it’s something challenging like Shakespeare, I’ll use a bit of drama or a bit of irony or somehow find something- I can still see the three most disaffected boys I’ve ever taught, several years ago, dancing around my teaching lectern as the three witches from Macbeth, rhyming off spells and pretending to throw unmentionables into a cauldron, the rest of the class helpless with shared hilarity.  It’s not just that life’s too short, although there is that too:  if laughter can break down barriers, then sometimes it can help with barriers to learning; someone’s feeling that they’ll never be able to understand something so difficult; their prejudice that it’s irrelevant to them; that they’re only doing English because no-one has a choice.  

 

But laughter isn’t always good.

 

As teachers, we’ve all had that moment where the laughter gets too much, where you feel you’ve lost the class for a moment, where it could just all go wrong.  Well: I certainly have.  I think I’ve always managed to rein it back, but it’s definitely happened once or twice.  There’s the awkward laugh, too: that pet hate of the teacher, the moment when you tell someone off and they laugh, and you know it’s the awkwardness of the situation and that they don’t know how to react, but you’re angry and you’re stressed, and you get even angrier and more stressed because you interpret it that they’re laughing at you.  There can be that moment when laughter goes wrong: you tell your partner, your friend, or someone in your family about something which upset you and they laugh, because you’re usually good at laughing at yourself, but somehow this time you don’t feel like that about whatever it is you’ve said, and you end up hurt and with bridges to repair between you both.  

 

But worst of all is the derisory laugh of mockery.

 

It’s schadenfreude- the joy in others’ pain- laughing when someone falls over or hurts themselves.  But there’s a much worse version and it’s as virulent as that pandemic which we know so well.  In my opinion, it’s illustrated nowhere so perfectly as on social media, because there you can see it visibly in that hateful emoji reaction which some people enjoy so much.

 

Another scenario to consider.  There’s a serious news story: maybe an accident, a rescue or a fire.  People are posting comments and reactions, and tagging one another in order to share the news.  And then it starts.  You see those spiteful, ridiculing, derisory and mocking laughter emojis stacking up.  You know that the people who post them are sitting back and feeling something much more sinister than schadenfreude.  It’s like a cartoon witch’s cackle: it’s someone rubbing their hands and laughing mockingly and feeling some kind of scornful, superior hatred for those who’ve been unfortunate.  Someone almost died in a car accident?  LOL – maybe they should buy a better car next time, and learn to drive.  Someone almost drowned, swimming on a local beach?  LOL – that’ll teach them to ponce around in a Dryrobe.  There was a fire in a local school?  LOLOL – the kids must’ve been trying to warm up because the stupid teachers insist on keeping the windows open because: covid. It’s soul-destroying, it’s cruel, and it’s the worst feeling in the world when you know the truth is serious and merits shared tears more than shared laughter; shared support and most of all, shared help.  The cruelty of the mocking, ridiculing and derisory laughter emoji is the injury that follows the initial accident, the fear which is the consequence of the near miss, the breakdown of trust which makes you certain that you won’t always have those warm, shared moments of being at one with everyone you meet.

 

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron once put LOL on a text or email of condolence; he had seen the acronym, and had mistakenly thought it meant ‘lots of love’.  And just like him, any of us can get it wrong.  Any of us can utter a misplaced laugh: find something funny which turns out to be tragic in the end.  The tension of a classic tragedy so often includes comedy which goes wrong: we see it in plays, films, tv dramas and novels all the time.  The laughter you shared with someone becomes a bittersweet echo once they’re not there anymore.  You remember their laughter just as you remember their voice: with sadness as well as with the fondness of your memories.  

 

In one of my favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice, one of my favourite heroines, Elizebeth Bennet, says this: 

‘I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.’

Like Elizabeth Bennet, I ‘dearly love a laugh’, but I also very much 'hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.’

 

Let’s try not to get it so wrong, with that weird sound we make in our throats, or the emojis we post to symbolise it graphically, that we hurt one another or the countless others who might hear or see.  Let’s try to share our laughter kindly.  Let’s try not to deride- to mock- to hurt. Let’s try to use laughter to bond, sharing difficulty and finding what is positive or happy or amusing.  Let’s share laughter as one of those weird things that makes us human, not use it to attack human failings or failure. 

 

Let’s try to use our laughs for lots of love, not lots of derision, lots of scornful superiority and lots of hate.