Laughter Lines

Today I laughed at the wrong moment. It wasn’t a big problem, and not a very big laugh, more of a snigger, but completely in the wrong place. It was just something that someone said, which seemed funny to me, at the time.

I can’t share it with you because I don’t even remember what it was that was said exactly and the person who spoke didn’t mean it to be funny, it was just the way they expressed themselves. Upon hearing my small outburst the other person just stared at me blankly as if I were a fool, and my work colleagues ignored me, as if this was completely normal behaviour for me, as if I am a serial sniggerer, that I have some tourettes-style affliction to cackle at things that aren’t meant to be funny. Which is a worry.

I have a fairly dark sense of humour at the best of times. I sniggered when my mother-in-law told me a few years ago that she (or someone else) wasn’t going to a funeral as it had been cancelled. What? Did the deceased get better? Was it a terrible mis-diagnosis? I have a vision of the funeral directors loading the coffin in the back of the hearse and hearing a faint tapping from within. I can hear all the insincere explanations, “Sorry about that but you did look dead”.

I laughed when I saw an old man fall out of a wheelchair. God, that looks bad written down doesn’t it? Oh, but it’s true. You should have been there. It was hilarious. I’d come out of the back of WHSmiths near Leicester Market some time in the late 1990s (it wasn’t a time travelling branch of WHSmiths I might add, it just happened to be the 1990s at the time, it wasn’t a crappier version of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ where I turned a corner and ended up in 1996, sorry I’m going off the point) and there was this elderly couple parked up.

The wife had just hauled her husband out of the car and into his wheelchair but he wasn’t happy and was bellowing instructions at her while she buzzed round to try and get him organised and her bags out of the car. Unfortunately she had parked his wheelchair with the back wheels perilously close to the kerb. He didn’t realise this as he was facing the pavement but whilst she was distracted he decided that he wasn’t satisfied with where his good lady had placed him on the pavement and, giving up on his approach of bellowing orders at her, reached down to move the wheels forward.

Unfortunately this endeavour didn’t go as well as he’d hoped and his wheels rolled backwards ever so slightly towards the kerb causing the whole chair to tip backwards. For a moment, as the front wheels left the ground, he was suspended for a moment, neither falling nor completely on terra firma. In that moment I caught sight of his face. He knew what he’d done and knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. I don’t know why but that instantaneous look of panic followed by annoyed resignation to his fate struck me as funny.

He proceeded on his backwards descent and then all hell broke loose with the market traders rushing to help while I slunk back into the doorway of WHSmiths with tears rolling down my face. He wasn’t hurt, the poor old duffer, just a little shaken but perhaps next time he’ll leave the wheelchair manoeuvres to his long-suffering wife. Does that sound terrible? Perhaps you had to be there. If it had been on ‘You’ve Been Framed’ you’d have raised a smile, I promise you.

Then there’s the road ragers, they’re proper hilarious. This guy came racing up behind me on the A14 one Friday night. Now I’m no slowcoach myself but before I could make way for his obvious haste he decided he would undertake me instead and wave at me with his fist slightly clenched. I understand this to be a sign of aggression but as he was a little red faced fella his anger amused me and I smiled. Then I laughed, and before he could get past me it was clear that I was not sympathetic or threatened by his behaviour as he could plainly see me sat at the wheel hooting with laughter at his puffed up face. He roared off in disgust which was even funnier.

Mind you, about 10 minutes later I got caught up in a massive traffic jam and the chap on the radio said there’d been an accident ahead of me near Huntingdon and thus the A14 was shut. I sat in the traffic hoping it wasn’t my little red faced man who had gone further up the road, madder than ever that some ugly speccy idiot in a tie had just had the temerity to laugh at him and, with tears of rage in his eyes, had wrapped his souped up Vauxhall Astra around the rear bumper of an Eddie Stobart lorry.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is. Maybe that laughter is the best medicine, unless of course you’ve just driven into a truck, fallen out of a wheelchair or nearly been buried alive, in which case there are other medicines which will be of better use to you.