The Lucky Pearl of Mirth
A flash of fear comes right at you, grips and shakes you as it rips through your system, but it was a false alarm, everything is actually fine. When someone pops around the corner and startles you, the innocent movements flash into our reflexes faster than our thoughts, and our bodies get ready for action faster than we understand none is needed. When fear comes nestled right up next to safety, both arriving in almost the same moment, the juxtaposition is so instant and alarming that you yell, curse, and laugh. The laughter is called nervous laughter, but I think it’s deeper than just the butterflies - your entire nervous system has been shocked while you still stand secure, and laughter uncoils the spring that instantly wound tight, ready to fight or flee for life.
We all laugh when this shock/relief happens, but when it happens to me, the mirth might overflow. There’s been a few times when the shock/relief hit me in a way that got out of control, laughing way beyond what was appropriate, such as the time I was sitting in a small, darkened, college classroom listening to a ho-hum slideshow presentation.
This was an Ecology class, and the day’s topic was about environmental highlights in the local area, everything was dim and cozy. The mood in the room was quiet and a bit sleepy as we stared at the screen and listened to the fan and turning gears of the projector. He talked on and on in his mild and pleasant way as he clicked through the slides of maps and photographs.
He turned to the screen to point to something specific, and at his touch, the scene exploded - the screen flew up into a clanging, flapping dervish, spinning and flipping the cord with alarming speed. The invisible screen had jumped alive like a wild cartoon, a threatening menace with a pull-cord whipsaw and metal banging glee. The spinning and ringing went on, then slowed, and then stopped. All was quiet again and he was safe, standing there in front of us and the bright empty wall, with his pointer still in his hand and a wide-eyed, stunned look on his face.
Everyone laughed a polite laugh, it was funny to be so startled and to see the professor’s expression, but I lost my mind. The class pulled itself together, the screen was cautiously pulled back down, the lecture was set to resume, but I was still in the grip of the moment. It was too much - the gentle man, the explosion, I could not stop laughing. Soon an assistant teacher in the back of the room shot me a dirty look and I took myself outside, where I stayed laughing for quite a long time, taking sips of water, walking around, breathing, trying to pull it together. I eventually slipped back in, unsuccessfully chagrined and still simmering with giggles, kind of embarrassed, but come on, that was hilarious, right?
A few years later, I was at the end of a long-distance bike trip, 800 miles of cycling and camping through the south. I was with a friend whom I admired for his playful, silly ways - he got my attention when he rested his forehead against the wall in a glass elevator and said, “If you look down and flap your arms, it feels like you’re flying.” Soon after that, he rolled a cherry tomato down the health food store aisle to say “Hi” and we went for a walk where we found a piece of rope on the sidewalk, tied it to our ankles, and did the three legged walk the rest of the way. We soon set off on a two-wheel adventure with open minds, little money, and a vague destination.
As the summer heat became unbearable, it became clear it was time to park the bikes for the season. We arrived in a new town with only what we could carry on our bikes, so the first night in the new apartment in a rough neighborhood was not so different from the camping we had been doing for the past six weeks. The electricity hadn’t been turned on yet, which also meant no hot water, but it had been more than a week since we had showered so very cold water and the absence of a shower curtain didn’t deter us. We lit a candle in the darkening house and stood together in the bathtub, taking turns under the icy stream. It was tough, but we were used to it.
Shivering, he kelt down in the tub to gather up his warmth and courage, all balled up in a tense little squat. Then, leaping like a frog over the edge of the bathtub, because that’s the kind of silly guy he was, he sprung up and over, hit the wet linoleum and shot across the room on his back. In an instant he was wedged under the toilet, his knees up to his ears, straddling the throne with two butt cheeks nestled around the porcelain base.
When I say he shot across the room, that’s just what I mean, like lightening. One minute he’s right next to me and the next he’s a like a helpless pale bug on its back, throttled across space and pinned under the crapper, gleaming and wet in the candle light. It is a position you never, ever expect anyone to be in - there are lots of ways to approach a toilet, whether you are peeing, puking, or cleaning it, but this - this was a way of relating to it no one could even dream of. Bare asses and toilets naturally go together, but not like this.
I think I laughed for three hours straight that night - the kind when you are ready to settle down into rest and sleep but you cannot. Just as things begin to relax, you see the whole scene in your mind again and explode, snort, and weep. And it was like this for weeks.
He also thought it was kind of funny, and yet a little put off that what could have been a head crushing concussion was my new favorite joke. “I could be dead right now and all she can do is laugh.” I had to tell this story —and as we made a few friends in our new town, he had to endure the retelling, always playing the straight man, “I could have died, but ended up with my ass wrapped around the toilet, thanks.”
Sometimes I laughed so hard I couldn’t talk. I could tell the lead up to this story, but when I got to the moment of leap, I could only squeak out the words “floor” and “toilet” before giving up to take a breath and wipe my streaming eyes.
The humor of the scene is pure and perfect, the alchemy of innocence and calamity, falling through grace to land in safety, into an intimately compromised but unharmed state. And it happened so fast, with a thud and a streak across the dark floor, it entered a place beyond time, there at the base of the throne. That may seem too grandiose, but time has not dulled this moment, not one ounce, and in fact it’s only richer. We left this little apartment in the south, headed north, made children and careers, fell out of sync, divorced, and continue on in a co-parenting friendship that has over twenty years behind it. All of the future context of that moment adds to the mix and keeps me rolling, apparently forever.
I still laugh ‘till I’m exhausted, witnessing again and again our goose pimpled nakedness in the dark apartment without a single dish. If laughter is the best medicine, then I have my own inexhaustible private reserves. Like a magic pearl of mirth, it’s one of the few things I can count on in this world - I can take it out of my pocket and laugh ‘till I cry at the memory of an ill-fated leapfrog and an ass-hugging embrace in the candlelight of our sweet, shivering youth.
