Nat

I was going to write a post tonight about static electricity and toilet seat covers. It was going to be funny, and it was going to highlight the importance of finding joy and delight in unexpected places.

Static electricity is funny all by itself, what with shocks and your hair standing on end. My high-school physics teacher, Dr. Perrin, had two PhDs from MIT along with a deadpan sense of humor, which was never more evident than during the lesson on static electricity that he conducted with a pelt the orange cat color of Morris, from the old Nine Lives commercials. He kept referring to the pelt as “my assistant, Morris.”

Anyway, I was at the office today and wondered as I tried to shake the paper seat why I had never noticed this expression of static electricity. It kept being funny.

The point is that it doesn’t take much to make me laugh, and that’s just the way I like it. Dr. Madan Kataria has founded an activity called Laughter Yoga devoted to laughter exercises. Participants gather and laugh on purpose. The laughter builds until it’s cathartic. It didn’t quite come to that in the men’s room at my office, but it could have. It’s the small pleasures that make a good day.

Dr. Kataria notes that the average adult in the west laughed 20 minutes per day a few generations ago. The average is now just 5 minutes per day. Imagine life in 50 years.