Laughter is the Best Medicine

            Laughing is all about who you are with. One of the things that bind friends and family together is laughter. When you can laugh with someone, it makes being in his or her company much more enjoyable. I have already told you about a time that my family broke out into uncontrollable laughter, so now I am going to tell you about one such time with my friends. It has been said that laughter is the best medicine, which is the premise for the story I am going to tell you.

            Finals are an extremely stressful time for just about everyone. Students are studying for hours upon hours, finding only enough spare time to eat and sleep. In my opinion, finals are an unrealistic way to get you to shove as much information into your brain as quickly as possible, only to be forgotten shortly after the test. Nevertheless, they are something we have to get through semester after semester and I have found that the best way to survive is through laughter. Yes, it is very difficult to stay focused and study for that long, but everyone is in the same boat and if you find a way to laugh through it then you just might make it out in one piece.

            During my first round of college finals freshman year, I became much closer with someone who is now my best friend. We are both in a science-based major, so the type and quantity of studying that we had was about the same. We were both going to be there until Friday and on Thursday night we felt like we were the only people that still had finals left. We had been in the same study room in Scharber every day since dead days and we were simply burnt out—and probably slightly delusional.

            At about 10 o’clock that night we decided to take a 30-minute break before we powered through the rest of the night. We turned on some music and danced like idiots and after a couple minutes we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. Part of it was probably because we were so tired and stressed we couldn’t think straight, which is a prime example of the relief theory of laughter. It was so nice to be able to not think about school for a few minutes and release some of that tension we had built up. Another reason we were laughing was at the lyrics we were making up to the songs. This fits in with the incongruity theory and the wildly inappropriate response method of humor outlined in The Comic Toolbox. We weren’t making any sense and everything we said seemed so funny at the time.

            This fit of laughter served two major purposes. First, it acted as a stress reliever and made light of the serious situation we were in. It also allowed us to focus again because we felt better overall. Secondly, and most importantly, it strengthened the bond between my friend and me. It was still early in our friendship and we were at the point where we weren’t really sure about who we wanted to be friends with yet. But, ever since finals week that year we have been inseparable.

Laughter is a powerful thing, especially when you consider its ability to bring people together and give them something in common. I believe that people who laugh together generally stick together.