Can Laughter be an Antibiotic for Pain?

Have you ever had a horrible day? A day that’s so horrible it’s funny? What is it exactly that turns life’s problems into punch lines?

I had one of those horrible days.

Used with Permission by Keep Calm Studios

It started with my Weight Watchers meeting weigh in where I gained 2.4 pounds. Really? And there is not much more I can take off during a weigh it. I mean, I even flossed. I had to face the fact that the only thing I can still fit into are my high school earrings.

So, I go upstairs to my bedroom and it stunk. My neighbor’s dog was over and pooped on my white carpet. That would not be so bad, but apparently right after that, my Roomba (an expensive, automatic robot vacuum cleaner) started and smeared crap EVERYWHERE.

It’s said that comedy is tragedy, plus time. But, at the moment of viewing my crap-streaked carpet, if someone had made a joke, I would have shouted in anger, “That’s NOT funny.”

But, a few hours after cleaning up the carpet and my Roomba, I posted it on Facebook and got a lot of laughs. 

There was no choice but to see if I could find the hilarity in this. Was there any way to go from being a drama queen to a comedy queen?

I remembered back to when I was in my 20’s and dating comic Andy Kaufman. He broke up with me, leaving me angry and bitter. I couldn’t stop obsessing about being dumped, until one night I went onstage at the Hollywood Improv and made a joke about it. 

Maybe the best was, “I was in love and we had one thing in common, we were both in love with HIM. I worshiped the ground he walked over me on.”

As the audience laughed, the pain went away. That’s perhaps when I realized that laughing at something can be the antibiotic for pain.

Please post about your horrible day in the comments. 

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