Unrestrained Laughter: Incongruity

For Halloween this past year, Joe Hartshorn invited me and a couple of our girl friends to go trick-or-treating with his younger siblings. If you don’t know already, Joe’s youngest sisters are absolutely adorable so it was an obvious decision that we were going to drive to Frisco. After an awesome time going around with his family and helping sort all of the kids’ candy, my 3 friends and I decided to go on a walk and have conversations amongst each other. About 5 minutes in, we stumbled upon a park. Our inner 5-year-old selves ran over to the swings and were monkeying around on the playground equipment. As we were leaving, Joe attempted to jump over a teeter-totter but his foot caught the lip of the seat and he pancaked face-first into the mulch. My two other friends and I burst out into laughter. In fact, I even fell on the ground and was rolling around because I was laughing so hard. It was one of those things that you just watched in slow-motion and kept replaying it in your mind, each time producing unrestrained laughter.

The laughter in this incident is definitely an example of incongruous humor. We all expected Joe, because of his apparent ‘athleticism’, to successfully clear the obstacle. However, when the unexpected happened it caused us all to laugh. Because of this event, the rest of the night was full of jokes and laughter. The mishap not only affected us in the moment but for the remainder of the night. Moreover, I believe the event brought us closer together. Even though this event was so miniscule, and doesn’t even relate to friendship, the power of laughter is immense. Human beings are able to develop chemistry between each other in so many different ways and laughter is the quintessential way of doing so. To this day my 3 friends and I still reflect back on that moment, and the night as a whole, as one of the most memorable nights of first semester. Without this seemingly miniscule event, I would be unable to confidently say that.