“Major Tom is stuck under the fence!” My father used to regale us kids with stories of his adventures with his cousin Jim, and this is one of my favorites: the two boys were acquainted with an old gentleman of the retired military sort, who often came to tea and had nothing whatever to do with ground control. Major Tom was florid, jowly and big bellied, and for some reason my dad and Jim imagined him trying to crawl under a fence and getting stuck. How he would roar, and how his jowls would quake! It didn’t take much for them to immerse themselves in this scenario. Once, they almost got thrown out of a movie because of it. Allow me to elaborate: they were watching a movie about a ship fighting its way through far-northern waters in the days before such things as sonar and radar. The method used in searching for icebergs ahead was for someone to climb up to the crow’s nest and periodically emit a prodigious roar. If there should happen to be an iceberg dead ahead, the sound waves would echo back and raise the alert. Anyway, the boys were watching the movie, and the audience was breathlessly silent during this scene of gliding through the darkness in fear of ship-killing icebergs, with the tension occasionally heightened by the bellowing of the lookout. . . “Major Tom is under the fence!” hissed Jim, and they were helpless with laughter.
And then there was that time in Howard Johnson’s in the seventies, when my sister and I went there with our boyfriends, and I found disproportionate amusement in the presence of a small cookie clinging to the side of every dessert. Imagine my helplessness when my own dessert, a milkshake, finally arrived with a cookie perched forlornly on the plate next to the glass. . . A shade (or two) darker, or course, is finding oneself laughing when someone else is hurting.
“Hysteria” is derived from a Greek word meaning, I kid you not, “uterus.” OK, I get the concept of “hysterectomy,” but “hysteria”? That’s just rude. That dark, wavering line between healthy laughter and the near escape of something primeval exists in all of us. And whatever it is that wants out might do better with regular, moderate exercise. I suggest each of us strive to have at least one belly laugh per week. Maybe that way, when the beastie comes calling it won’t have grown to the level of something that will get us kicked out of polite society.
For your further edification:
ground control to major tom – Bing
It was one of the times you were in Powhatan. We got talking about a children’s book about a native girl named Nomusa and her mother’s name was Buselapi. William thought I said Boo Slappy. We laughed until we cried
Oh yes! And no sooner had we sort of regained our composure, then he would wait a few beats and say softly, “Boo Slappy.” And we’d be off again. I had sore ribs after that.