Personal anecdote about laughter and fasting, no substantive investigative content

When my young daughter Holly came out to stay with me that summer, she decided to join me on my silent day. We communicated with handwritten notes. Holly wrote, Does /aughter count? Since we were making up the rules as we went along, | answered, Yes, but no tickling. Naturally she tried to make me laugh, but | held it in - and got a rush. All the energy that normally gets dissipated into the air with laughter seemed to surge through my body instead. | decided to stop laughing altogether, just to see what would happen. The more | didn't laugh, the more | found funny. And, paying closer attention to others, | refined my appreciation of laughter as another whole language that could often be more revealing than words. Sometimes | would get a twinge of guilt if | nearly slipped and laughed, and | remembered what | had always known, that children must be taught to be serious. When | mentioned my laugh-fast to Dick Gregory, still on his food-fast, it didn't sound so far- fetched to him. That's two things people do out of insecurity,” he said. “Eating and laughing.” “Well, what would happen to us if everyone in our audiences realized that?” “Brother, we'd go out of business.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015393