Do you laugh as much as you did in high school? Do you still have friends who crack you up? Are they the same friends who cracked you up when you were sixteen?

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Answers

I was in the Air Force for 20 years (74-94). Since then I've worked in the civilian world as a computer programmer.

I find that my programmer friends can be witty and elict the odd chuckle, but the Air Force was a lot jollier place to work.

To this day my friends from the Air Force can make me laugh until my sides hurt.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

If I'm in the right mood, almost anything can make me laugh. My sense of humor runs from silly to sarcastic to morbid. When I get together with my best childhood friend, we've been friends since we were five, we are able to giggle at anything. We don't even have to say anything, just convey our thoughts with looks. Also, a co-worker and I like to make fun of people so that passes the time as well.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

I laugh a heck of a lot more than I did in high school, or in my 20's, or in my 30's either for that matter. High school was not very funny. My childhood (including teen years) was not funny - it basically sucked for the most part.

My 20's and 30's were very difficult in many ways as well. Heck, most of my 40's so far have been very difficult too, but I laugh at the absurdity or life a lot more than I used to. People around me tend to think I'm very funny (not just funny-looking, but a funny person), so that helps.

I still have one friend from high school days, but she lives in Canada and has for about 25 years. We see each other maybe once every five years, and we correspond occasionally. I still have several friends from my late teens and early 20's though, and some of them still crack me up. I've known my husband since I was 20 (I'm now 47) and we still laugh at each other and with each other quite a bit.

I always try to find the humor in things, or at least see the irony or the absurdity, and I don't take myself nearly as seriously as I did when I was younger. I think the sooner people get over themselves, the better.

I know my sense of humor doesn't come through all the time in emails and forums, but take my word for it, it's there. :)

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

My best friend and I laugh all the time. We've known each other for almost 14 years now, and we have so many private in-jokes that sometimes our conversations are incomprehensible to anyone else.

Whenever we go out to eat, we see other "couples" sitting at tables, not talking, or looking mad at one another, and certainly not laughing. I always feel bad for them. Who wouldn't want to have fun, especially if you're out for the evening.

Whenever I'm in a show, I find that I laugh a lot with the people involved. There's something about spending so much time and energy on something that has nothing to do with "the real world" that makes everything even more amusing. Or it could just be that people get punchy at 1:00 a.m. after six hours of rehearsal.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

me. i crack my damn self up on a regular basis.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Besides Lemonbugg who can crack me up, the one person who makes me laugh without fail is my boyfriend. I love his sense of humor. Not only is he funny, he can laugh at himself.

Plus three to four times a week I perform with people who are supposed to make me laugh. We get together and make each other laugh. oh, and the people who paid to see us make each other laugh, but that's beside the point, really. We wouldn't do it if we didn't crack each other up.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Not having attended high school, I don't know that the question is applicable in that sense. I laugh much more now than I did when I was young. My brother Andy makes me laugh like a lunatic on occasion, usually by doing some stupid song-and-dance routine that he's been forced to undertake by a sadistic choreographer.

But the one person who could really always crack me up was my cousin Drill. He could tell stories like no one else on earth, and he was full of observations that were hysterically funny, like George Carlin times 30. Sometimes I'd cry, sometimes I'd laugh so hard I'd think I was going to black out or have a stroke. It was frightening sometimes.

Drill died last week.

I don't know when I'll laugh, really laugh, again.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

my friend stephanie and i laugh... pretty much non-stop when we're together. when we were roommates, we had these great moments where we'd be laughing really hard, and we'd both just start shreiking "oh my god i'm going to pee! oh i have to PEEeeee!" and we'd both bolt for the bathroom - of course, only one person could make it...

also my girl karina; i sort of make fun of her in a gentle sort of way, and we both kill ourselves laughing. janice always makes me laugh... these chiquitas all live in toronto though, so we can only giggle on the phone now, or on my visits - which are not that often.

here i have andrea - we always laugh. and vicky - we're always laughing at ourselves and our "boy" obsession. and oh the people i work with are a kick! we laugh ummmm.... at least 5 times a day. mostly 'cause we're being horribley sarcastic to eachother, or hitting eachother with rubber bands. silliness but always fun.

i think there should be a study done on whether people in comedy live longer; i mean i think laughter is SO good for you - i wonder if it has some sort of health benefit...?

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Beth makes me laugh. And so does my good friend Rochelle, who just 2 weeks ago picked up her whole life and moved to North Carolina.

My 3 year old daughter makes me laugh. She makes me laugh so hard sometimes I have tears streaming down my face and I can't breathe.

I think it's criminal if people don't get to laugh really hard every once in a while.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

I laugh at everything.

I'm one of those people who laughs innappropriately.

"Your mom just died? Oh! I'm so sorry. hahahahahahha"

I laugh before I even hear the punchline, because I know it's going to be funny.

I laugh when I load up pamie's page, just knowing I'm going to lose it somewhere in the entry.

And looking in the mirror? Geezus, hold back the *tears*!

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

my friend fergie has the innate ability to say things that just come out of her mouth wrong, and reduce the rest of us to tears.

and then there are my friends at college. i know three people who constantly make our lunch/dinner table roar with laughter. the people who make me laugh the most are the ones who are the natural performers. the actors and the actresses in real life. we sometimes refere to dinner as the "bill, lani and megan show", as each other them competes for our attention with jokes and monologues and humor at the expense of the other two. bill and lani are in london this fall. we're much quieter and we don't laugh as often.

but i'm easy, really - i love to laugh, especially laughing until i cry. like take today in my american politics class. we were using a computer program to analyze data, and we came up with the conclusion that arizonans were old, non-farming, coke sniffing republicans who did badly on math tests. the class was in hysterics for ten minutes, and looking back, it wasn't that funny! but there you go. almost anything will make me laugh.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

My sister makes me laugh. When we went to England this year, we snorted like idiots on the tube, and got surreptitiously stared at. (No one even TALKS on the London tube, except people on their accursed cellphones.)

My husband makes me laugh. I never would have believed it. When I met him (eight years ago, I think) he had a reputation for fierce, uncompromising seriousness and sober wisdom. I remember him fixing me with a gimlet eye and asking me what books I read, with the air of one who expected a short essay in proper form.

In reality, the man can say the wickedest things with the most innocent expression. Oh, and do weird half-nekkid gnochi dances in his boxers.

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

My husband can occasionally make me laugh. Our sense of humours are just so different sometimes that it's hard for us to make each other laugh much - but when we do, LOOK OUT!

Of course, I have a plethora of others who make me giggle on a regular and consistent basis.

Stasi, Lew, Jesse, Cameron, Jon, Mali... I could go on and on... (=



-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

I crack myself up constantly, sometimes making the people around me think I'm from anotehr planet. Possibly. Put some liquor in me and I laugh at nothing.

My husband manages to me me laugh on a regular basis. My friend Sally, who I've known since our junior high school days, still does silly things that make me laugh so hard I can't breathe. Her pets - 2 dogs, 3 cats - also perform a comedy routine for us every time we see them. My parents are acutally pretty funny, especially when my dad is teasing my mom about something. Their dog is a riot, but we think that's mostly because he slams his head against the coffee table a lot, and therefore has caused himself a little brain damage. Poor thing.

I look forward to e-mail from my friend Leigh, who is in England, to make my workday a little easier. He is so sarcastic that he's bound to say at least one funny thing each letter. And, of course, reading through people's websites usually guarantees at least one funny thing.

And my boss wonders why I spend a lot of my time giggling.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

I just realized I don't laugh as much as I used to. I will have to work on changing that - I'm turning into an old grouch!

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

my SO. We have been together for 12 years now, and have mutated into having the same sense of humor. I say mutated because it tends to run to sick, twisted, Not-June-Cleaverish thoughts. But it's all good! It is a little scary when we say the same thing at the same time though.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

My cats make me laugh. My assistant makes me laugh. She is a theatre major and can tell a story really well, do great impressions, and is pretty, darn clever. I told her "Just keep me laughin' it's an unwritten job requirement." I hope she never leaves. I don't laugh like I did in high school. Junior high age was the age when everything was funny and sides hurt and tears streamed. I wish I could laugh like that again. It's good for your health you know...a laugh a day.... My husband was pretty funny....he always had a joke to tell.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

Pat, who's my husband now, can really make me laugh. A while back I was reading shelly's diary and she was talking about her boyfriend M and said something like "If you hang around with him you'll lose your dignity and self respect because he'll always be making you laugh, but your face will hurt from laughing so much."

That's what Pat is like, for me. And I make him laugh too.

Like one time he had a fitness test that included measuring his fat content. He said, "If I were a piece of meat at the market, I would be the cheapest cut."

Other people who make me laugh are my friend Andrea (who moved across the country so I don't get to see her much), and all the rest of my friends. I was going to name them all but why bother - if they're my friends, they make me laugh. it's required.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 1999