Love to Laugh

Laughter is not only great medicine, but it also provides a much-needed break from worry, stress, and despair—unwanted companions to most of us since 2016. My husband and daughter release laughs that comedians would do well to rent because their mere unfettered gleeful sounds can induce guffaws across an auditorium as though they were contagious. In contrast, I was raised to chuckle demurely—one aspect of my early training in how to disappear in a crowd.

Enter my hero, the book I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF by Bill Bryson. I bought the book to entertain myself quietly so I could share space with my husband as he focuses on the hockey playoffs on TV. Too empathetic about both injury and hostility, I’m not a sports fan. (Seven games for each pair and that’s only the first level of competition? I had time to read WAR AND PEACE, but I wasn’t that desperate.) Unfortunately for my husband, I didn’t stay silent and unobtrusive as I read. I burst into unavoidable laughter at erratic intervals.

Having spent over twenty years living in Europe with his British wife, Bryson was commissioned to write a series of columns describing his observations of American life as he returned to a home in peaceful New Hampshire. With few adjustments, he pulled his columns into this book, including comments on quirks of British living in comparison. (I can’t say I recognized his descriptions of American post offices and their offerings of cookies to patrons, but I assume the post office in his New Hampshire town was an anomaly beside most of my experiences.) Great comedians succeed best when they raise a mirror to the absurdities in our daily lives, and Bryson writes humor beautifully.

Granted, not every chapter is meant to be hilarious or even flattering to American life—only honest, but while I was reading certain  passages, I was in grave danger of descending into hysteria—quite a feat for a suitably trained invisible woman. At this writing, my husband is  finishing reading I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF since we’ve lost power to a spring snow storm. He giggled hard enough in places to make his face turn red. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the humor all over again just hearing his laugh. I generally comment that we don’t love enough, but we don’t laugh enough, either.