The All-Day Comedy Club
Sister infuriates Brother by doing a monologue
in the dog’s sweet earnest cartoon voice, about how much
the dog hates Brother. Dog says, “Whenever I see him I
want to light myself on fire.” Brother howls in rage.
I try to stomp down my giggles but fail, pleasing Sister,
pouring gas on Brother. Everything escalates, dog’s voice,
daughter’s glee, son’s protests, my laughs. Tears all around,
and “paroxysmal, expiratory breathy respiration.”
According to the biology of humor, deaf babies laugh,
and we are thirty percent more likely to laugh out loud
with company. When a Navajo infant first laughs, Dad
throws a party. Tickled rats laugh ultrasonically.
Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans chortle too. Twenty laughs
equal three minutes on a treadmill. Later at a dinner with aunts,
my gut aches from holding it in, as Brother, with evil
gleaming eyes, tells Sister, “I look at you and see thirty years
of sadness.”
in the dog’s sweet earnest cartoon voice, about how much
the dog hates Brother. Dog says, “Whenever I see him I
want to light myself on fire.” Brother howls in rage.
I try to stomp down my giggles but fail, pleasing Sister,
pouring gas on Brother. Everything escalates, dog’s voice,
daughter’s glee, son’s protests, my laughs. Tears all around,
and “paroxysmal, expiratory breathy respiration.”
According to the biology of humor, deaf babies laugh,
and we are thirty percent more likely to laugh out loud
with company. When a Navajo infant first laughs, Dad
throws a party. Tickled rats laugh ultrasonically.
Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans chortle too. Twenty laughs
equal three minutes on a treadmill. Later at a dinner with aunts,
my gut aches from holding it in, as Brother, with evil
gleaming eyes, tells Sister, “I look at you and see thirty years
of sadness.”
Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise,and The Gospel of Galore, a Washington State Book Award winner. She co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, and shared in a staff Pulitzer covering 9/11 at The New York Times.