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January 15, 2005

Time To Smile

Today I found some pictures of myself during the “disco” days. I laughed so hard I almost cried. What scares me is how cool I THOUGHT I looked. At the time I imagined I looked like John Travolta. NOT!!! I hate to think what my prom date must have thought. How embarrassing! (No wonder I did not even get a goodnight kiss on the cheek.)

I must say it felt so good to laugh after spending the last few days with a shawl of sadness wrapped around my soul. (See last two blogs.)

I always find that humor can make a huge difference during tough times. A few years ago I stopped in at the hospital, after an interview, to do my rounds as the Doctor of Mischief. I was wearing a suit, which I don't often do. (Writers look very uncomfortable in suits.) I came out of the elevator on the third floor and entered the children's oncology wing. Nobody was around except for 12 year-old Emily.

Emily was standing dead still in the hallway with a strange look on her face. I came up to her and asked if she was okay. She didn't reply. She just stood there rooted to the spot. I crouched down in front of her and asked if I could help her. A sudden look of horror crossed her face as she opened her mouth and threw up all over me. It went everywhere. Projectile style. Down the front of my suit, onto my shoes and even into my pockets.

Needless to say there was nothing for me to change into, so I ended up wearing nothing but a washed-out pale yellow hospital gown that tied up with two flimsy ribbons in the back. Of course the nurses made fun of my hairy legs and everyone laughed.

But the laughing didn't stop there. On that day I chose to wear the ugliest under-shorts in the world. I cringe thinking that I must have looked a sight as I dashed down the hospital hallway, the gown flapping open behind me, exposing bright red under-shorts with white polka dots, as I headed for the parking garage.

The next day a 12-pack of plain white boxers was anonymously delivered to my house. The unsigned note said, "Please wear these when you visit the hospital. Your polka-dots made the grannies blush."

For months afterwards, Emily burst out laughing whenever she saw me. She would just point at me and laugh until tears ran down her cheeks. "You make me feel better," she would say and then squeal with laughter.

I know laughing made her feel better. Her mother told me time and time again how that incident was brought up during tough times throughout her treatment and suddenly the tension would dissolve as everyone burst into laughter. (At my expense thank you very much!)

We've all heard the saying 'laughter is the best medicine' because it is. Norman Cousins in his book ‘Anatomy of an Illness’ tells us how laughter was his main medicine in defeating a crippling disease. Cousins believed that stress from his intense and compulsive desire to succeed caused his illness. After watching comedy shows Cousins discovered that he felt a lot better. The more he laughed the faster the symptoms and pain disappeared.

This might sound crazy, but have you ever found yourself smiling about something amusing, even at a funeral or a serious occasion? I have, and that smile or giggle made me feel a lot better. You feel better because laughter triggers a powerful response in your body. The action releases endorphins in your brain which give you a 'natural high' and you begin to feel great. This trigger turns on your respiratory system, which experiences the kind of stimulation you get when you work out.

Laughter is a natural pain relief tablet that needs no prescription. It works like this. You are stressed and tense because of the tough situation you're in. The more tense you are, the worse your headache, backache, heartache and pain become. So, you take a dose of humor from a book, a television show, a comedian or even the thought of your 80-year-old mother-in-law wearing lingerie. Then you laugh your head off. Instantly you begin to relax because you can only laugh when you are relaxed. (Did you know that it's almost impossible to laugh unless your body is perfectly relaxed and in turn, the more you relax, the less you worry.)

As my brother Steve always says, "So your roof is leaking, your car is so old your kids ask to be let out a block away from school, granny got married to the twenty-year-old newspaper delivery guy and your water-heater sounds like it has rocks in it. With all that going on why make things worse by being miserable? Laugh. It's darn funny.”

Sometime, the world is so crazy you've just got to laugh.

Posted by trevor at January 15, 2005 11:05 AM