UNCONTROLLABLE IN ALL WAYS

Do you remember the scene in the original "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory" with Gene Wilder where Charlie and his grandfather are in the bubble room.  They disobediently sip the "fizzing lifting" drink which gives them the ability to float.  Pure delight and squeals of laughter fill the room as Charlie and his Grandpa Joe enjoy the moment of floating.  Let's not get off on whether you are a bigger fan of the original movie or the remake with Johnny Depp.  Suffice to say that Johnny Depp took Willy Wonka's character's strange, sometimes eeriness to a whole other creepy level.  Especially the scene where they are in the boat.  I had nightmares and I am over 8 years old!  I love to laugh and I partake of it daily at differing degrees and intensities.  There have been  moments where it's not been totally appropriate to laugh, and a few of those times I have been quite unable to stop.  Once in high school while out with a girlfriend of mine prowling around the outside of a friend of ours house trying to be quiet, laughter started.  Those tight parameters of darkness, having to be quiet and being sneaky were a losing combination.  The giggles set in.  They didn't just set in, they took over completely.  I begged my girlfriend to stop making me laugh.  The more I begged, the more she edged my laughter up a notch.  I began to pee my pants.  Oh no, it wasn't just a dribble.  It was a complete emptying of the bladder.  There was no stopping it.  Tears streaming down my face and urine pouring down my legs only made me laugh harder.   My friend was now hysterical and paralyzed with laughter as we tried to run and hide when the outside lights of the house flipped on (no doubt they heard a ruckus outside in the darkness and woke to a puddle underneath their picnic table).   Some years ago while in my husband's hospital room, his roommate- an older gentleman in his 80's with no doubt great hearing loss, was being questioned by the doctor on the other side of the curtain.  Because of the man's poor hearing the doctor was virtually yelling questions at him.  The doctor asked yelling, "Do you abuse alcohol daily?"  The man, from the Bayou of Louisiana had a Cajun drawl that was hard to understand to the ears of a Midwesterner.  He responded with some sort of Cajun slang which translated to a no of sorts.  His daughter, sitting in the room with him said, "Daddy, that is not true.  You drink first thing in the morning and continue all day!"  It went from bad to worse as the doctor's line of questioning changed to his bowel habits.  Ok, that is not a pleasant discussion when you can use a normal voice level, let alone when you have to use decibels that call a rabid pack of dogs too.  "Sir, what are your bowel habits," the doctor asked, "are your stools soft, hard, dark?  How many times a day do you have a movement?"  Again, the man could not hear the doctor well enough to answer so the daughter rephrased the doctor's questions ratcheting up the volume several notches.  At that particular point I lost it on the other side of the curtain.  I laughed so long, trying to stifle the noise, that my stomach muscles burned in agony and I began to cry from the hilarity of the questioning, the volume, his answers in his Louisianian voice and his daughter's statements of "daddy that is not right".   There is a picture of me at my parent's dining room table following a large family dinner slapping the table with tears running down my checks and laughter so gripping me I can't stop.  My family was laughing from the story my brother-in-law had told but then when I couldn't stop laughing, it fueled their laughing at my laughing.  I would gain control for a moment, and then start right in again prompting my mom to snap a picture.  The picture makes me laugh!  My husband and I laugh constantly.  In fact, I've had a couple of those out of control laughter and can't stop moments with him.  One in fact where I would stop laughing for a split second and rethink what was funny and start right back up.  Before we knew it we were both teary eyed as the laughter didn't stop for quite some time.  I'm not sure but I think that sort of laughter is probably more beneficial to my health and soul cleansing than a day at the spa or a good run.  I find humor in almost everything.  And I mean everything has a spin of humor in it and I go there most of the time.  That's where my laugh lines have come from.  Ok, maybe age contributed too:)