Humour is one of the necessities of keeping ones sanity. Without humour our lives would be dull indeed. Laughter, like tears, seems to be a necessary emotion, enabling us to relieve tension which, in turn, probably lets us live a longer life.

The ability to laugh at ourselves and others sometimes gets us into trouble when we laugh at inappropriate times. Why do we laugh at another’s misfortune, we don’t really think it is funny when someone slips on a banana peel or walks into a wall but, for some reason, we collapse into hysterics.

I was once with a group of friends at The Grist Mill, in Keremeos, we were listening to a man talk about the history of the mill, mostly about the man who had started the whole thing. The speaker was obsessed with his subject and had a huge file of information and photographs. I found the lecture exceedingly dull but, for some reason, I got the giggles.

One of my friends could see my distress and gave me a nudge, which didn’t help the situation. I exploded into a loud laugh which I tried to cover by turning it into a cough. This caused the woman beside me, who was dozing, to wake up and offer me a cough sweet. This added to my sense of the absurd and caused me to go into full hysterics. I had to excuse myself and go to the washroom where I spent a good five minutes weeping with loud laughter.

If anyone had walked in on me at that time they would have assumed I was out of my mind, doubled up in front of the stalls and laughing insanely. By the time I calmed down, I was exhausted and could hardly stand.

Another time I was attending the funeral of an acquaintance, it was held in a Catholic church and the service was very long. A cell phone went off and everyone was rather startled, the owner of the phone was rapidly searching her purse to find the offending noisemaker.

One would have thought that everyone else would have checked their own phones, to make sure it didn’t happen again, but no and a few minutes later, another one rang. More searching of a purse and now some dirty looks heading in the offenders direction.

A few moments later the priest started to swing the incense and as he did so, another phone went off and the eerie tones of the music from the film track of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ flooded the church. That was my undoing it was just too much to take. Up came the bubbling of laughter that threatened to choke me as I tried to hold it in. I quickly left the main floor of the church and made it to the porch before exploding into gales of laughter. I only hope that the other attendees thought that I had been overcome with grief, not laughter.
I hope that my own farewell service will be light hearted. I fully believe I will be going to a better place, so no long faces required. If some poor soul gets a fit of the giggles, it would be very appropriate. I have lived my life with humour and, being British, lots of sarcasm and I try to see the best of things. Life is too short to be solemn and this world has so much to laugh at, so don’t worry if your funny bone has a mind of its own and betrays you at inappropriate times, laughter is good for you.