Laughter is magic.

 As I indicated in my previous entry, I’ve been under the weather. I was offline for many, many days: I did not check email. I did not post blogs. I did not check other people’s blogs. I did not sit in front of YouTube for hours and hours doing bizarre searches for bizarre people who film themselves doing bizarre things for the bored or procrastinating or sleepless people of the world. But I also: did not answer my phone; I refused dinner invitations from my friends; I did not visit the gym; but this last one was okay, because I also did not visit the grocery store and, therefore, I did not eat and so I did not gain weight. 

I have been the human equivalent of a rainforest sloth, only slower. 

I am still in a bit of a sloth-like state this week, only now I am a sloth that can breathe better and no longer has the kind of cough that forces others to look at me cautiously and then quietly remove themselves to a far side of the room.

So, I went to work today and was helping a group of very small non-English speakers grasp the craziness we in America (and much of the UK and occasionally Australia) like to call “English,” by drudging up as much enthusiasm as I could for a book which was called Sheep in a Jeep. This turned out to be an exceptional literature circle choice today because, apparently, the mere image of sheep riding around town in a jeep strikes non-English speaking 6 year olds as absolutely, hysterically funny. They couldn’t understand a word I read, but had a fabulous time nonetheless. Who knew sheeps in jeeps were such a hit among the youngster set?

When the story was done, a child asked me (in Spanish, but for your convenience I translate it now): “Why do you smell good?” 

I was touched. Here I was, slowly recovering from a nasty, nasty bout with the flu, a flu which had caused me to stare listlessly at TV screens and shower quite infrequently; so infrequently that even that morning I’d argued with myself for at least 10 minutes over whether or not it was worth it to shower. And now here was this lovely, lovely, innocent little being telling me how good I smelled to him. Somewhere in between Sudafed and eucalyptus cough drops, I’d somehow managed to exude a pleasant, human-like aroma that caused others around me to breathe in deeply and smile.

This is very, very important to my story because it is a psychological law of the universe that small children are always brutally honest…if they don’t think you smell good, they have absolutely no qualms making you aware of that, too.

However, right now, I would also like to take a moment to note something you might have already noticed: this child’s question had absolutely nothing to do with sheep or, for that matter, jeeps.

Do not be alarmed. This is a very usual occurrence in my world and another psychological law of the universe: I attempt to teach small children something of tremendous, world-wide significance, like why a polar bear would never eat a penguin, though they might sometimes eat a human (for the confused: polar bears and penguins don’t live in the same hemisphere)(On the other hand, polar bears and humans do). But my small friends, while incredibly fascinated by polar bears, often would rather talk about how the cat they had 4 years ago (whose name they can’t remember but they think it might have been called Yellow Cat) ran away and got run over by a truck. They cried for 100 days about it but now they have a new cat (whose name they can’t remember but they think it might be called Orange Cat). And when asked what in the world Yellow Cat and Orange Cat have to do with man-eating polar bears, simply give a blank look and say, “I don’t know.”

But like my small friends, I digress. So back to the boy’s why did I smell so good question: I said, “It’s just soap, lovebug. Es mi sopa.” 

And my tiny friend laughed and laughed at that.  

I was a little put off. You know, I have a cold, I feel like shit, and now I have this 6 year old laughing at my hard-learned Spanish. And not everybody in America takes the time to learn another language, you know. In fact, some people spend a whole lot of time writing letters to the editor about things like: Why do people in America have to learn Spanish when this is America and we should only speak English.

But not I. No, I took the time to learn the language and embrace the culture(s) of the language, so don’t blame me. I spend a lot of my time writing letters to the editor about things like: The world does not revolve around people who speak English and maybe people would love America a little more if we took the time to learn other languages and cultures in the world around us, since the world also does not revolve around America.

And so I found myself contradicting my very own letters to the editor by thinking, Well, fine then. Fine, fine, fine! Laugh it up, buddy! Enjoy yourself. Let’s see what a funny man you are when YOU don’t get a sticker on your way out the door. That’ll teach YOU to laugh at somebody’s Spanish when you don’t even speak English. 

But then I realized: in Spanish? Oh, ha! The word for soap is actually jabon; the word for soup is, uh…sopa. Silly me, I’d just told a small child the reason I smelled so luscious was because I’d showered in soup earlier. Lucious, luscious soup. Probably: chicken noodle.   

By the time I realized this, the child was already running around to all the other kids, pointing at me and screaming, “She has soup on! She has soup on!” And then they all agreed: this was just THE funniest thing EVER, much, much funnier than sheep in a jeep, even. And then I was laughing with them too because, well. It kind of is the funniest thing ever. I mean it’s just not every day you meet a person who bathes in soup and proudly tells the world about it. Maybe on YouTube. But not, typically, in day-to-day reality.

This is exactly why little kids are just the coolest people on earth to hang out with. Everything has comedic potential, nobody is above being laughed at even if a person is at the throes of death’s door with a cold, and kids find things like: pictures of sheep in jeeps; ice cream pies in faces; clowns beating each other up; a left shoe accidentally flying halfway across a room and clobbering someone upside the head; the mere insinuation there will be people kissing one another; poop, farts, boogers, and burps (in that order); the word “underwear;” and the briefest, fleetingest glimpse of a barenaked butt (including and especially their own) to be THE most outright, hysterically funny things. And they will laugh at these things until milk comes out their noses, which always makes them laugh harder. And when they laugh, it is usually in a combination of giggles, screeches, and small screams until, when they are finally done, they lie on the floor, a miniature ball of hiccups, completely spent, with a stomach that aches, but in a really good way. 

In fact, whenever I meet a child who can’t laugh, I immediately know at least three things: (1) there truly are people in this world who don’t know how to laugh—at anything, but especially themselves—and this unfortunate child has been burdened with at least one of these people as a parent or caretaker, (2) this is a child who will be a very lonely adult with few, if any, dinner party invitations later in life, and (3) they are surely headed for a mid-life crisis heart attack, possibly as soon as they enter their 20’s.  

And so, my life lesson for the day (and yours now, too) is: Laughter has magical health properties (so they say) (“they” being all the experts on magic and how it relates to human health). And kids usually believe in magic. Clearly then, children are practitioners of magic since laughter is magic.

So I prescribe one medium-sized to large-ish dose of childish, magical hysteria each day, possibly more if you think you can stand the ensuing hiccups and stomachache. I took one today myself and totally forgot about my dripping sinuses for like, a whole 5 minutes. That was awesome.