Laughing Out Loud

Suppose one morning in autumn you decide to take the dog for his weekly constitutional. The November sun is shining splendidly, yet the air is as crisp as a Granny Smith apple on the tree. Patches of ice have formed during the night, due to the somewhat unexpected fall of precipitation. You and the dog (let's call him Theodore) dodge the icy spots with a great deal of care and effectiveness and continue your jaunt without incident.

The neighbor boy however, the one generally responsible for delivering your morning newspaper, is not as cautious nor as fortunate as you and Theodore. He passes you on the slick sidewalk on his neon-green rollerblades with a can of Red Bull in his hand, and his plastic-sheathed wheels hit the ice with a great deal of velocity, sending him into a skid and dumping him in a fetal-like position on the cold, hard pavement.

What is your first inclination?

Do you:

a) Call the ambulance for rollerblade boy
b) Try to help him yourself
c) Continue on your morning walk
d) Command Theodore to attack the boy while he's half-conscious so he cannot identify you or the dog
e) Scream obscenities at the boy for nearly hitting your defenseless canine
f) Laugh like a lunatic at the boy who is currently writhing in pain
g) All of the above

If you chose g), then you are more than likely an extremely gifted multi-tasker, a maniacal superhero, or just someone who is suffering from a variety of personality disorders. If you chose f), well, you've probably had people tell you there is something wrong with you at sometime or another in the past. But is there something wrong with me? you ask, hoping for a positive prognosis. Would you like to know the truth? Yes, you say. Well then, here it goes. "I spill my bright incalculable soul" (from E.E. Cummings "O Thou to whom the musical white spring).

Yes, there is something definitely, definitely, definitely wrong with you.

Awwwww, you say, the air suddenly sucked out of your lungs as the disappointment descends upon you like an eagle after a spawning salmon.

Wait, let me rephrase that. No, I can't rephrase it; I think I said it fairly well. There is something wrong with laughing at people who fall down. In English, we have a word to describe people like that; we didn't have one until we borrowed one from the Germans, but it functions beautifully now that we have it. It's called schadenfreude, a person who laughs at other people's misfortunes or misery. So, don't be a schadenfreude; you need to suppress the urge to chuckle at calamity. But I can't! you plead, as the tears suddenly begin to form in your eyes. I've always done it! "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness" (from Samuel Beckett's Endgame).

Well, I have a solution. The next time you see someone skate into a patch of ice and hit the pavement like it's WWII Nagasaki, instead of dwelling on how that person looks like a stinkbug resting on its exoskeletal back, waving all of its tiny legs wildly in the air, perhaps you might try dwelling on this:

What if you were a stinkbug?

Oh, wait. You are a stinkbug; you like to laugh at people who fall down. Fo' shame!

Anyway, the only consolation I can offer is the fact that you are not alone in your debilitating disorder. After all, America's Funniest Home Videos would not have stayed on the air for all of these years with only a viewership of one. Therefore, you are part of a not-so-elite group of individuals that enjoys watching skateboarders get hung up doing ollies and kickflips; you like to see people climbing stairs, tripping, and rolling to the bottom; you like to see teenagers performing a variety of tricks on the trampoline and flying off onto the grassy area beside it in a broken and battered heap (Consequently, there's a good chance you also laugh when you see grown men getting smacked with balls squarely in the...well, that might sound redundant).

The point is, laughing at people who fall down might look funny doing it, but that does not mean you get to take advantage of their comical plight and guffaw ad nauseum. The next time you're out walking the dog and you see someone biff it hard into the blacktop, take a second to collect your thoughts, pushing all of the laughter aside, and help them to their feet.

Do not think I am judging people who do this. "'That is not it at all, / that is not what I meant, at all'" (from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"). I have done it myself on occasion. Yes, "'good fences make good neighbors'" (Robert Frost's "Mending Wall"), but why can't we do better than a fence?