So Funny

Today I walked in to my living room and my roommate was laughing so hard that she had tears coming down her face. I didn’t know what she was laughing about, but immediately started smiling myself and wanted desperately to know what she found so funny. As she sat laughing in her chair pointing at her phone, I couldn’t help but laugh myself at her inability to stop laughing. Eventually she calmed down and explained that she had seen a quote that a friend had posted on her Facebook wall. She handed me her phone so I could see it firsthand.

This is what it said: “In grade 8 I did a power point presentation on ‘whooping cough’ and my opening slide was a photo of Whoopi Goldberg coughing and I was the only person who laughed at it and I couldn’t start the presentation for like five minutes because I was laughing too hard at my own joke”.

Immediately I started laughing. I am not sure what exactly made me laugh so much at this quote, but I think it was all of the components that make this so hilarious. It all started with my roommate’s intense laughter. She put me in the state to expect to laugh, and I wanted to be laughing with her. Then came the image of this person’s situation. Imagine a student, beginning to do a presentation (which it self already sets up a serious tone, since most classroom presentations are formal) on a serious topic, whopping cough. Then they use a play on words and present Whoopie coughing. If I had been in this kid’s class I think I would have laughed too. It just seems so unexpected that you have to laugh. And the final element that led to me finding this situation hilarious was how the person said that no one else laughed with him. It would be so funny to watch a person laughing so much at their own joke, only to have no one else laugh with them. All of these elements led to me laughing with my roommate for a good few minutes. Even now as I am writing this, and think back to the quote, I am laughing. It is just so funny you cannot help but laugh!