Why we sometimes have to laugh when it absolutely can't

Just act normal, Kiek. Please, act normal. It's not funny. Don't laugh now. Wipe that disgusting grin off your face. Seriously. Count to ten. Just look at the ground instead. Don't make eye contact with others now. HAHAHAHA. Oh, fuck...

Do you know that feeling? When you have to laugh really hard when it's absolutely inappropriate? Man oh man, especially in high school I had it totally under control. I still remember that someone from the Fireworks Prevention Foundation came to give a guest lecture and strangely enough, from the second he walked in, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to not laugh.

Now he also had a particularly high voice for a guy, but it only got worse when he started showing pictures. One girl had no fingers left, the other was missing an eye. Out of nerves, I suddenly started laughing really hard. “Do you find it funny?” the man asked. The whole class looked straight at me. “No, not at all,” I said, followed by a snort, and not even two seconds later I was sent out into the hallway and the teacher slammed the door in my face. Later I heard from my friends that they could still hear me laughing for at least five minutes through the door.

If you think: fuck, I have this too, is there something wrong with us? No, there isn’t. It's not that strange to laugh at inappropriate moments, for example when something bad happens or when you get scared. Why do you think shows like Funniest Home Videos are so popular? Are those videos really funny? Not really, right? But people falling and god, we suddenly find it so funny.

There is an explanation for it. When you get scared, you produce stress hormones that prepare your body to either flee or fight. Your heart rate goes up and you become more alert. Quite handy if you were being chased by a saber-toothed tiger in prehistoric times, nowadays a bit less necessary, you would think. That stress has to come out somehow, and so your body looks for a method to relax. Exhaling is a quick and efficient way to do that. And you do that when you laugh.

Voilà, mystery solved. We laugh to get the stress from the scare out of our bodies. Actually, we are just very smart. But whether we make, uh, friends with it is a second question...

HAHAHA.