You Were Created For Laughter

I really enjoyed this chapter. Some of the stories Debbie told in some sections I had already read in her fictions but some I had not. I most enjoyed the stories she told about herself. I got to thinking about the times I have told about what I considered minor incidents that have occured particularly when I was living overseas. I see them as minor incidents that are just part of living in a foriegn country but people who have not had the priviledge find some of them funny. Just the other day I was talking about the sights, sounds, smells, and behaviors of people I experienced in markets in Korea. A trip to a Korean market is a feast for the senses; some pleasant juicy morsels and others repulsive as a bit of foul tasting medicine. There are no separate sections, or apparent organization in setting up the stalls which often serve as homes for the shop keeper (living quarters in the back). Since there is no really organization you have a stall selling bolts of cloth for making clothes next to a stall selling live seafood or live chickens. The stall selling live seafood may just have washpans or plastic tubs with some water and that particular item. Therefore you'll have various muscles, swimming shrimp, wiggling eels, and octapus climbing out of their tub being occassionally corralled by the vendor.
Then the conversation turned to strange things we have eaten and between myself and someone else who had also lived overseas we had the group and ourselves laughing until our sides hurt. They were both repulsed and laughing at our descriptions.
There were two sections that I really enjoyed, these were; that we need to laugh at ourselves and that God wants us to laugh. God created us to laugh, to experience joy and the release of laughter. I think this is why laughing has such benefical results on the human body. One of the things my addiction robbed me of was my ability to laugh. I remember vividly hearing a deep, roaring belly laugh coming from my body. That kind of laughter really is, as Debbie says, exercise. It is still an a amazingly healing time to spend a few hours with friends that leave my sides hurting from laughing so much. To laugh until the need for my bladder control underwear is very apparent.
The situations of Debbie's that I identified with were putting pantyhose and the street vendor in Hong Kong suddenly jumping out in front of her yelling "we even have your sizes". The pantyhose identification is understood by just about any woman who has ever worn pantyhose. The street vendor is more identified by American women who have ever spent anytime shopping in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong (China) because oriental women are so much smaller than most of us. It is often almost impossible to find ready made items in their local markets that will fit.
This chapter brought back some memories fond and not so fond. It also brought back some much needed laughter.