Seriously...

I don't know what it is but I have a complete and total inability to take anything seriously. Perhaps it is nervousness or my medication but I always seem to laugh when it is completely inappropriate to do so.

I just can’t seem to help myself; the slightest little thing seems to be incredibly funny to me. I think it is just the general level of discomfort I feel in pretty much every situation that seems to spark this up.

For example, I find serious meetings very hard to take seriously, once during a small meeting my boss said ‘Maybe it’s because...’ and in the pause between words I suddenly sang ‘...I’m a Londoner!’ – I have no idea what possessed me to say that out loud, he’s not even a Londoner :) It just seemed so funny and the sentence seemed to need finishing.

A similar situation occurred when my team lead said ‘Because...because...’ and I replied with ‘Because, because of the wonderful things he does!’ with a flourish. At which point he looked at me like I had lost the plot and I had to swiftly apologise and ask him to continue.

Libraries are a constant source of amusement for me, there is something about the request to be quiet that just makes me worse. I usually end up thinking about something ridiculously stupidly pant-wettingly funny and I usually have to leave before I completely embarrass myself.

People singing to me or expressing great emotion towards me, particularly in a public place seems to make me double over with laughter – I’m really glad that my husband proposed to me in private or I may have seriously offended him.

To be fair, I am not actually laughing at the event itself, it is simply how uncomfortable I feel in that situation that my brain suddenly recalls something I saw on Robot Chicken or something that someone has said to me that made me laugh. Once that has occurred I get into the inevitable situation where I try desperately not to laugh but the fact that I am suppressing my laughter seems to make it funnier and so I attempt to suppress that until that just becomes so hilarious that I find myself laughing hysterically and I have very little explanation for my behaviour. This is neatly described by Jeff in the TV comedy ‘Coupling’ as ‘The Giggle Loop’.

I often feel uncomfortable in posh restaurants, I generally drop food all over myself or knock things over or swear by accident – I just can’t be trusted in serious situations.

During my graduation ceremony I found that I was going to be the last person on the stage to collect my degree and to be honest, once I found that out I almost couldn’t climb the stairs to the stage as I was too busily mentally restraining my laughter. This wasn’t helped by the lady at the front of the stage who said ‘It’s ever so brave of you going last’ and I turned to see that there was no one left in the queue. I suddenly felt stupendously silly and this just made it harder to stop laughing.

I must seem mad, suddenly bursting into laughter on the bus or my mouth twitching desperately in interviews but anyone who has ever felt this way will completely understand where I am coming from on this.

I particularly like comedy shows as at least there your laughter blends in with everyone else’s but serious plays have me fleeing to the loo at the interval to laugh myself senseless.

Recently I went to a few art exhibitions and while walking around in the silence and the contemplation, my husband kept saying to me things like ‘I really like the use of light in this painting’ which just kept making me laugh as it all just seemed so silly. I pointed out to my husband that I appreciate art in my head very much but I find it difficult to share my thoughts with anyone else for fear that they think I am being somehow pretentious.

I am much better at expressing myself in written form rather than verbally, this is mainly due to my desperate inability to string words together in a sentence when I am nervous but also because if I am writing things down I can laugh as much as I want. I’m laughing now, but you can’t see it so I feel more comfortable knowing that I am laughing at something ridiculous I saw on the internet the other day and as I am in an empty flat, no one can see me.

What I do know is, generally the more serious the situation, the more likely my brain is to find it amusing.

Nevermind, you know what they say, laughter is the best medicine.