the hardest I ever laughed?

Can most people remember the time they laughed hardest in their lives? Unfortunately, it is easy to forget these moments and what gave rise to them, even though they are near the top of the list of the most pleasurable moments in a lifetime. For my own part, I generally find them still very funny whenever I remember them, but I don’t remember them often enough; nor do they make me burst into actual laughter very often, but simply bring a smile to my face in recollection.

They’re also not usually communicable. There is a certain “you had to be there” factor to these moments, because the mood and context at the time are a key part of the experience.

There is one occasion in particular where I do remember myself literally doubled over in uncontrollable laughter, to the point that I was finally lying on the floor in a public place with a few dozen people staring at me. For maybe five minutes I couldn’t get up, and I wasn’t quite myself for the rest of the night.

The occasion? It was in my early twenties, and I had just been to an incredibly pretentious play with a rather seedy, sarcastic college friend. As soon as the play was over and we reached the lobby, my friend said that he planned to write a review of the play, and call it “a stunning indictment of postmodernity.”

But you had to see the play to really understand. I wouldn’t call it one of the ten funniest lines I ever heard, but it’s definitely one of the ten hardest laughing episodes of my life. I’m not sure we understand enough about the difference between the two categories.

Actually, that friend may have caused 3 of my top 10 laughing fits. He had a certain manner of delivery, in just the right sort of thick Asian accent. And he had that adorable seediness about him that was innocuous enough so as probably never to lead to any harmful results for anyone. “An amoral sweetheart,” is how one mutual friend described him.

As a quick addendum, how many actual cases are there on the books of people literally dying of laughter? I wasn’t that close to death in the case mentioned above, but it was surely the closest I ever came. Breathing became almost impossible. My stomach muscles were in pain. My lungs seemed to be convulsing. Obviously, from the fact that I was actually lying on the floor of an auditorium lobby in full view of a public crowd it is clear that I had lost control of my own physical posture. How much more would it take to get pushed one step further and actually drop dead in that situation? And what would the cause be– heart failure, or breathing failure, or a burst vessel in the brain, or what exactly?

Heh. Wikipedia HAS AN ARTICLE ON THE TOPIC. The one about Chrysippus is hilarious. A donkey drinking wine and trying to eat figs? Oh mwahaha! I could laugh till I died.