Connecting Learning and Laughter

Thinking about what I am learning and how it connects to laughing my mind is drawn to my discussions in my kinesiology class lately. This class is all about physical disabilities. Before you get upset that I am connecting laughing and disabilities hear me out.

In this class we are learning about multiple diseases and disorders. We learn how they affect mental capabilities. We learn how they effect physical aspects. Certain disorders effect the physical body of a human rather than the mental. For example, Parkinson's Diseases is this way. Parkinson's effects people's speech, it becomes slower. They have a hard time not drooling. Parkinson's creates rigidness in people's body. Simply Parkinson's is a disease where not enough dopamine is connecting with neurons therefore muscle contractions don't work as smoothly. This creates tremors in the arms, legs, hands and jaws. Parkinson creates slowness in movement. You can see how Parkinson's creates physical changes.  

Let me tell you where all of that kinesiology talk is leading. So this is a completely normal, functioning human being with a few physical problems. People like to laugh at those who they feel are superior to them. Can you see how this plays in? It sad to think about but people with disabilities like Parkinson's get made fun of everyday. Students on a college campus, someone at the grocery store, a co-worker or someone just walking down the street will be laughed at for their appearance. They understand why people are laughing, they are fully capable of feeling hurt or feeling defined by their diseases. This laughter is the cruelest of all to me. I believe that laughing at a person's disease or disorder is worst part of laughter. Even writing about people laughing at this makes me cringe. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be at the end of this laughter but I imagine it makes the world a very lonely and hurtful place.

I have a good friend whose brother is legally defined as a midget. This is not meant as a derogatory term or a hurtful term. Her brother is now in middle school. Can you imagine how hard it would be to have a physical disability in middle school. Middle school students are know to be mean or harsh. They are known to take little things such as hair color, height or middle name and make fun of them. I can imagine the laughter that gets thrown at him. This makes me cringe.

In my class we talk about "person first terminology". This means referring to someone first as person then to their disorder or disease. I think when we all think about laughing at someone with a disability we must think of "person first terminology". They are a person not their disease.  I know this is not a light subject and not something we like to think about but I believe it must be thought about. Laughter is a tool that can create friendship and positive atmosphere but we must remember it is a tool that can be used to tear down someone.

Conversations with Ali #1

My first conversation with my conversation partner Ali Alnasser was at first slightly awkward then turned smoother. I had to say I expected this. Meeting someone for the first time can always be awkward, especially if it is an arranged meeting. I imagine it’s like an arranged marriage. You are thrown together and told to get along! Not that I have a problem with is, I am enjoying the challenge of relating with someone very different from me.

 I asked Ali to meet me at Union Grounds, I figured it was a common place we both knew. I showed up a few minutes early, I like to think because I am on time person but this isn’t true. My nerves got to me a little bit so I figured get there early and scope the place out. Turns out he had the same idea. He was even their before me! We shook hands and said hello. Then conversation started. There was stops, starts, awkward laughs and funny moments.  We started out saying where we were from, your “typical” college conversation. He is from Saudi Arabia and has a cousin here at TCU. He is planning on becoming an engineer but has not gotten into regular classes yet. This really interested me. The students take English classes only to improve their English when they get here. For example they take reading, writing, speech etc.  Once they have mastered English they can enroll in classes to start regular school. I really know nothing about their program; I figured they would head straight into classes and try to learn English at the same time. I think about how hard that would be. Ali said it’s a lot of English.. like a whole lot. But he has noticed his vocabulary is getting better. He came to American at the beginning of January not knowing any English.  He has been here then over a month and a half. Ali seemed to me very good at English! Maybe he didn't understand what I was saying half the time but understood social cues to laugh and nod his head.

I did realize at some points my words were unfamiliar to him. I made a reference to someone being my role model. I could tell this word was unfamiliar therefore I gave him a few examples and a few other words for role model. He got the hang of it pretty quickly and told me his father was his role model. We were similar in that arena. My father is also my role model. Ali said his father worked hard, loved his family and was a good man. I have to say my father was the same. We both found similarities between us, we both like Beyoncé, Tom Cruise, most popular movies. I figured they had similar movies and celebrities and they do.  It will be interesting to see how he learns words from me and I learn more about his culture. I know barley anything about Saudi Arabia; I hope to learn more just as he hopes to learn English words from me. I know Ali gets typical English words from class but I hope he picks up our slang words that will be used by his classmates and teachers later on.

Today we are meeting again. I hope we have a good conversation like last time! I want to ask him what he’s reading! Any English books, if so what ones? Either way I am looking forward to it! He calls me “short girl” as a humors term. Therefore if anyone stops around outside the BLUU at 2 we will be there.. “short girl” and “tall boy”. Crossing my fingers that conversation number two goes just as well.

Uncontrollable Laughter – A day in the life of the Chi Omega House

Uncontrollable Laughter – A day in the life of the Chi Omega House

            A time recently I remember well uncontrollably laughing several times happen to be while watching the Grammies with my sorority sisters. We live in the Chi Omega house in the Greek. Living all together makes for a pretty good time. Everyone enjoys a laugh or a joke.  If you could read our GroupMe (an app for group messaging) this is evident.   From changing their names on the GroupMe to famous singers to posting photos eating toppers while working out it has an endless supply of funny messages.  I couldn’t ask for a funnier group of girls to live with.

            A group of 10 of us gathered together to watch the Grammies. From the red carpet to the final number laughter rang through the room. I can pin point a few moments of laughter but really the whole time we laughed.  When Lorde came on to the stage we were shocked. She didn’t look anything like what we had expected. We expected a young 17 year old girl with typical stylish and playful makeup and dress. What appeared on stage was neither. Lorde looked older to us more like 40 and was wearing all black.  Certainly not the picture we expected.  At that moment the room was silent. Then a moment or two later my friend Claire said she reminded her exactly like the evil witch in Snow White. This brought a onset of laughter. I had tears streaming down my eyes. We pulled up a picture and held it side by side, she did look very similar. We combined the theories of Superiority and Incongruity Theories.   We all believed without knowing it that we feel Superior to Lorde. Even though she is winning Grammy Award after Grammy Award we decided to judger her on how she looks. She doesn’t look typical to the stereotype of her ages as a singer. We decided we were better than her for that. The stereotype that all singers must be like Justin Bieber or Younger Miley Cyrus or Selena Gomez helped us laugh at Lorde. We saw the ways she looked different she was incongruent with the ways the world portrays young artist.

            A stopped writing this about two weeks ago. I am back looking at it now. Realizing that he humor we were using was Negative Humor. In your uploaded notes you said, “Humor invariably relies on stereotypes that diminish individual identity”.  That is what we did. I can’t say I am proud of myself the girls in the room. I can’t say we are alone in doing this either. On a college campus most of the humor going around is negative. It breaks people down. Those few great moments where humor builds people up are few and far between. I think by looking at all the positive humor in class lately it is reminding of us all the funny little things that can be positive.

            Yes we laughed continuously throughout the night. Most of the time by making fun of someone else.  Looking back at it it strikes a sour note in my throat thinking of what we did. But how do we stop this? How do we stop a culture so defined by putting others down to build ones self up? Remind them of that funny YouTube video of bad lip reading. Remind them of a child like humor. That’s not a question I can really answer but maybe with this class I will be able too.

Laughing Material?

Things I found funny, maybe you will too?


These youtube videos always kept me up late at night in high school laughing away. I thought I would share one of the better clips with you. If you have time to watch the whole thing please do!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hafvH8vdOdk

Now for a cartoon I find funny, I picked one closer to home.

For a funny one liner:

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.

 

I found this amussing on twitter as well:

 

Funny One Liners‏@funnyonelinersJan 4

"Isn't it great to live in the 21st century? Where deleting history has become more important than making it."

 

 

Enjoy!

A Start to Comic Relief?

Today in class my group of 4 looked into Sir Philip Sidney's idea on comedy. I have to say we were  lucky to have gotten a pro-comedy man than one of the bible. I find the idea that laughter caused death in the biblical times very disturbing. Maybe this is where the phrase "I almost died laughing" or "I died from laughter" comes from? Personally I enjoy laughter like many others and would not want to see death be the result from it.

 

Anyways to the point, I like a part of Sir Philip Sidney's idea. He says that comedy is a social corrective or a imitation of common errors in life so that normal people will not want to make the error again. I agree that some of humor is to point out common errors and to make people correct them. For example, today in my education class my professor did just that. I started answering a question with, "this is stupid but".. not a good way to start a sentence. He immediately stopped me, took my words and threw them back at me. Of course he did this to make an example use of words to the class. He was showing the error of southern girls putting themselves down for something they have said. My professor was trying to get us stop this. He was using this idea of Sir Philip Sidney to show the class the error of my sentence and error of this southern "tradition".

 

I don't agree with Sir Philip Sidney in part because I know that comedy is not just a social corrective. From the other theories we will study and have started to talk about I have gathered he doesn't quite understand the depth of comedy.

 

Making that connection to our book Comic Relief brings the book alive a little bit more. I heard in class and read a few blogs making points about the books slow pace. I have to agree with them about the pace but also with you about the important information. I can see with these small connections the book has to my life that already, well, as hard as it is to admit about a assigned reading book, this book will come in handy outside of class too. I am sure if you asked former students if they look at comedy a little different now they would say yes. I see how they would be able to say that.