Laughter- A Memoir

This is the memoir I had to make for creative writing. I had slacked of a little, so it's not as good as it would have been if I had revised more. Nevertheless, I wanted to tell this story because I thought that what happened was pretty hilarious. I hope you enjoy it and don't be afraid to critique it if you want.

         

                It has always been said that laughter is the best medicine. What is healed by laughter is up for debate, but we can all agree that it helps improve one thing at least: your attitude. And when something happens, you can either choose to laugh at it or let it hurt you. I can attest to this from my own life.

                Let me take you back to a certain day in the seventh grade. As far as I knew, there was nothing special about this day. There were no birthdays to celebrate. The school day went as it normally did with no change whatsoever. If there was any holiday set on the calendar, then it was in celebration of some obscure object that no one took particular interest in, even with the holiday set in place. Yep, it was a boring day with nothing to break the monotony, and it didn’t seem like it would change. Yet, with one little thought, it did.

                Every term, we chose a random topic to study in homeroom. The topic we had been studying for a while now was the early 1900’s. (Most of the focus was on machines and music.) Today was the day we were taking the test. If someone were to pick through my thoughts at the time, they would have deduced that I was bored. Nobody really wants to take a test, but we are all forced to deal with it. In desperation to escape the boredom, we think. We think about our future, our past, our wants and needs, our ideas, and basically anything else with philosophical importance. Sometimes though, we tend to be less productive in our thinking process and we instead tend to think about the color of our paper or the shiny thing in the corner.

                On this occasion, I was repeating a line from a cartoon I had watched the previous night before in my head. It repeated over and over in my head like a song set to loop forever.

                Blurry, photographic, evidence.

                The sentence wouldn’t stop repeating itself. I couldn’t will the words to be silent, nor did I want them to. The phrase was too funny to discontinue.

                Blurry, photographic, evidence.

                The words were cutting through like a knife. The knife cut so deep, I got loopy. I started to laugh. With every chuckle, the words sliced faster and faster, causing me to laugh harder and louder.

Blurry, photographic, evidence.

                I stopped getting louder, but when I did, my head just dipped down onto the desk as I became possessed with the words.

                Blurry, photographic, evidence.

                The words ran through my head again, but my laughter was slowly subsiding. The words were becoming dull and old. As I lifted my head up, I could see Chase and Abri, the people I shared my table with, staring at me. The looks on their faces seemed to relay the concern that I had lost my marbles or more likely the concern that they would catch my insanity like a cold. The looks were priceless. I fell down on my desk again, bursting into laughter.

 Most people would normally be embarrassed and would have slid down their chairs in order to hide themselves. I, however, found the situation to be very funny. Here I was, laughing my face off over once silly line and there they were, looking at me like some freaky circus act. They thought I was insane! I strangely found this very amusing.

This had been going on for about a minute or two until my teacher finally noticed. “Andrew,” he said, “please go wait out in the hallway.” Although I was still a little ‘high’ from my laughter, my body was slowly going cold. I walked out into the hallway, still chuckling to myself. All the while, Chase and Abri were still staring at me.

Pretty soon, I stopped laughing. I was finally free from the spell I was under. But now, that cold that had been setting in completely took hold of me. Realization struck. I had caused a disturbance in the class. I had interrupted those around me from doing there work. Because of that, I was now out in the hallway waiting to receive an unknown punishment. I was a dead man! I kept wondering what would happen to me for my crime. I knew it couldn’t be so bad. I mean what was the worst the teacher could do? Put me in a desk closer to his? Give me a demerit? Nevertheless, I had never been sent out of a classroom for bad behavior. That hurt my ego a little.

The teacher, Mr. Rod, finally came to serve his lashings on me. “Andrew, you want to tell me why you were laughing so much?” He asked me.

“Well….” I paused, slightly embarrassed. “I was thinking and something made me laugh a little too much.”

“For that long?”

“Well, Chase and Abri were staring at me which I found funny. That’s why I laughed more.”

“Well, just be more quiet from now on.” He said. “Get seated and finish that test.” I quickly obliged, wanting to get back to the comfort of my chair as soon as possible.

Abri and Chase had resumed working on their tests, but they still glanced up at me with that same look of self-concern when I sat down. I picked up my pencil and put my concentration to my test again, and the other two slowly copied my actions and forgot about me.

Everything was now as it had looked five minutes ago. Kids were taking tests and it was silent. However, what had just happened had forever marked the day in my memory. I can still look back and clearly see the looks on those faces. I look back on that day with much amusement and I can still remember precisely what the cartoon was that I had watched earlier. This is one memory that I will never forget.

Let me explain the cartoon. This was from the website homestarrunner.com. It's a website with short webisodes. One of videos is called "Strongbad emails." The guy, Strongbad, (I have no idea why he's called that,) a man in wrestling mask, (don't get that either,) receives emails asking certain questions which he then answers. The link to the catoon is listed below. (It's about two minutes long.)

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail145.html