laugh till you're blue

Yesterday I was watching Avatar while doing the long, boring, and very arduous task of spinning!  The blue people from Avatar are from a completely remote place, custom and language and my mind started wondering, do the blue people laugh?  And almost as I thought that, after about 7 spins of the wheel that goes nowhere, the blue girl person chuckled!  Suddenly it dawned on me how much laughter is a universal language!  Anyone who has travelled to a place where no English is spoken has experienced the universal language of laughter.  We struggle to communicate, sign language is used, pictures are drawn, we prance around like dyslexic monkeys, yet when we laugh, we laugh together and it is understood!  And have you ever noticed how once you’ve had a good laugh with someone, you seem to have formed an instant connection?

AND it really is contagious!

Isn’t it beautiful when someone tilts their head back, eyes form slits, mouth opens wide and she laughs from deep inside her belly?  I had a friend who had such a contagious laugh that once, while having coffee at Mugg&Bean, he let a big one out (a laugh I mean), and there was a definite post laughter-laughter from most of the people seated around us.  The other day, whilst walking down the streets of Stellenbosch talking to a friend, something I said was obviously funny to him (obviously!) and he belted out a laugh.  The old man on the other side of the street started chuckling and smiling!  In that moment our laughter had reached another and had made him smile too!  There was also that instant connection, we had shared a moment, though we will most likely never see him again.

It reminds me of the Mary Poppins song: 

So never miss a moment to laugh out loud, and when you laugh, you must really laugh, let your head tilt back, your eyes form slits, mouth open wide and, “BA HAA HAA HA HAHH!”