Having a larf

I’m just home from seeing Eddie Perfect’s performance of his show Misanthropology for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival at the Famous Spiegel Garden, and it was brilliant. He's such a talented man. Go see it if you can, there are only 4 more shows (and may even be sold out by now). I was entertained, challenged, made to feel mildly uncomfortable, and laughed my guts out. You can’t really ask for more than that!

But that’s not what I want to write about.

I went to the show on my own, running a wee bit later than I’d planned, and managed to walk through the door bang on start time. One of the glamorously attired front of house staff quickly ushered me to the remaining empty seat in the house, I dropped my bag on the floor, whipped my jacket off and sat just as the house lights went down. Timing!

The opening to the show is fairly spectacular, with dramatic lighting and a voice over intro from Eddie before he makes his way into the performance space to sing the first number. The intro, like everything else in the show, was funny. Not side-splitting guffaw funny, but worth more than a mere titter.

The woman sitting next to me laughed, along with most of the people in the tent. But her laugh rang out much louder than everyone else’s (not just because she was sitting right beside me - it was definitely a volume issue). And that was ok.

What made me really notice her laugh was the sound of it. It sounded like a fake laugh. Forced. The sort of laugh you might whip out when you’re trying to make someone feel like they are the funniest person in the world when in reality they are not in fact funny (which of course backfires because it is so obviously fake). Again, that was ok. It’s not unusual for some comedy patrons to bring out the fake laugh early in a show - maybe they want to be supportive of the artist, maybe they’re trying to encourage others to join in - who knows? But it’s not an altogether unusual occurrence.

As the show went on though, the woman’s fake sounding laugh continued to ring out. She was laughing in all the right places, but still I worried about her. It must be really hard work maintaining a fake laugh for so long.

I found myself stealing glances at her to check that she was ok. After all, fake laugh can be an indication that you’re not having a good time, maybe a sympathetic smile might make her feel as though she didn‘t have to try so hard. Maybe a smile from a stranger could help her relax a bit. I saw other heads turn her way, so I’m fairly confident I wasn’t imagining things.

But to my surprise, every time I looked at her she appeared to be genuinely having a great time. It didn’t add up.

And then the realisation hit me. She wasn’t fake laughing at all. She was laughing for real, only her real laugh sounded fake.

What an absolute curse! What a terrible affliction! To spend your life with the sound of your laugh causing suspicion, doubt and concern, when actually all you’re doing is having a giggle.

And it got me thinking about the sound of laughter. Anatomically, we’re all doing the same thing when we laugh, but in the same way that our voices sound different when we speak, I think I can generalise and say we all make slightly different sounds when we individually laugh. En masse though, it can be really difficult for your ear to discern the sound that each individual is making, unless there’s someone with a really distinct laugh in the group.

And in this case, poor old fake-sounding laugh lady was definitely discernible.

It reminded me of another distinctive laugh I heard a while ago. I was in a cinema with a friend and although the movie we saw could never be described as a comedy, it had a few funny moments in it.

A fellow sitting a few rows in front of us was a honker. Whenever he laughed he made a sound that can only be described as Demented Goose. HONK.

I was so alarmed when I first heard it, and wondered if perhaps he was choking. But he was still sitting up right, still moving a little, didn't seem to be jerking (as I imagine he might have if he had been choking) and I settle back to watch the movie. Next funny scene there it was again - HONK!

I exchanged a bemused glance with my friend.

Then it came again - HONK!

And I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh at his laugh. So did my friend.

Appreciating that we were probably being a bit rude, and being women who tend to throw our heads back and laugh with gusto, we struggled with it but in the end successfully reigned in our mirth.

Until the end of the movie that is. We stayed in our seats while the rest of the patrons filed out, including the honking man. And then we laughed and laughed until we had tears streaming from our eyes.

And there wasn’t anything fake about it.