LOL, LMAO, and well, ROFLMAO

I’m not a kid person. I’m a teacher by accident. It just happened. I needed to pay for the baby grand piano and giving music lessons seemed to make sense. I had planned to take 5 students for a couple of years. Four years later, I have 22 students that I invest in daily. I even cry at the recitals.

I did have education training in college, but I switched my major after a few months of classroom practicals. At the time, I lacked the patience for teaching… or the skill… or the will not use duct tape as a form of discipline. Even my own children sometimes chafe at my lack of natural maternal instincts. Nurturing was not the gift God handed me.

So why teach? Why is it that children and I seem to make a fair match these days? It baffles me mostly. But a thought came to me this week…

They make me laugh. Spontaneous, out loud laughter. This past Thursday, I laughed through 2 hours of teaching. And in the middle of cheek-hurting giggles, I realized laughter is a drug and the really good stuff is hard to come by. You can get the chuckle and the smile and the oh-that-was-cute… the lol. But the milk-spewing, catch you off-guard guffaw is rare. That would be the ROFLMAO. That, by the way, is the first time I’ve typed that. Rare.

You’ve heard women say that they look for a “man with a sense of humour.” Men scoff and proceed to tick off a list of what they THINK women want. Well, guess what boys… it really is a sense of humour. But like most things, it isn’t all a woman is saying.

What she means is she wants someone who can make her forget herself, who can make her react, who can brighten her mind, lift her and bring that lovely sound of spontaneous laughter out of her spirit. We can’t give this to ourselves. She doesn’t want a man to tell her stupid jokes… she wants a man who knows her well enough to tickle her mind because laughter heals and makes us feel alive.

I’m not a comedian. I see the world intensely to say the least.

What I discovered about myself this week is that I’ve created a world around me that counteracts that intensity… with children. And with my friends. The people I’m surrounded by know how to make me laugh… with them and at myself. They make me laugh at LIFE, even the parts that aren’t so great. 

My husband (also not a comedian– he forgets the punchline to every joke he ever tries to tell) knows how to evoke that moment when I stop thinking and just laugh. He does it by brilliantly mimicking some of my favorite characters… like Austin Powers and Sherlock Holmes. He does it just by being him and wanting me.

Why write this, you wonder? Well, it isn’t just to ramble on about my own neurosis (though I easily could). The thing is I’m suggesting we consciously populate our world with the people who make us laugh out loud, that make us forget ourselves, that give us the freedom to be amused by our own shortcomings. And only you know for certain who it is that is lifting your heart and encouraging you to take yourself a little less seriously. I don’t know about you… but I need that. Every. Single. Day.

[Via http://christytallamy.wordpress.com]