Humor 1

A room of three adults sit in near hysterics in a circle around a screaming 10-month-old and an Irish Setter who seems rather uncertain. I sit at my desk also audibly giggling alone in my dorm room as I watch this scene unfold on a video on my phone.

Now, if you know anything about me you know that (1) I love children, and (2) I will take any glint of an opportunity to show off my niece through a cute picture or video of her. The videos have recently become my favorite because of the little moments that are captured (like the one described above). The first 9 months of Dylann's babyhood had conditioned an "aw" or "how precious" response. However, lately she has surprised me with videos consisting of schadenfreude, although it does seem terrible to laugh at the misfortune of a 10-month-old baby. This video has become my favorite yet.

Dylann was opening some of her new Christmas toys. She's currently in the stage where she can stand pretty well if she is able to stabilize herself on something sturdy. So naturally she attempts to balance on a half-unwrapped (and fully unstable) organically-shaped box in the unwrapping process. This perpetuates into a full on tumble. Instead of reaching to pick her up and console her, the surrounding family all breaks into hysterics. People often say that babies look at your reaction to an event and base their own reaction on yours. This was not the case for Dylann that day. Dylann, although obviously not hurt, bursts out crying which fuels everyone's laughter. It only takes about 3 seconds for the world's happiest baby to become overcome with confusion and tears.

I think that this is an interesting scenario for a few reasons. The reaction of the adults in the room at the time of this accident (both of Dylann's parents and her grandmother), the near-viral status that this video gained within my family and friend's circles, and my own reaction to this video.

Dylann's parents are pretty laid back, more of the lassiez faire parenting style (which is surprising since she's their firstborn) leading their reaction to this scenario not to be too surprising.  However, the grandma's similar reaction added an element of surprise in this video to me. She is normally very nurturing and hands-on in helping to raise the baby, so to see her sit and giggle along with everyone else probably helped to provoke my laughter. (I am sure that she was the one to help Dylann up and console her when the video ended.)

The thing that my family really loves about Dylann's mom is how great she is with sharing pictures and moments through videos like these with all of us. When I opened up this video in the group message there was at least 10 other people that also received Dylann's video. This not only initiated a full-blown text message overload for my phone of literally everybody and their mother's reactions to this clip-but it also really shows the social inspiration and connectivity that humor can bring. This has become really important for our family since we are spread out all across the country.

 I remember watching the video at least 3 times back-to-back just laughing to myself, but feeling a bit guilty. This reaction seemed natural but it was the one that followed seems to be more intriguing. I soon ran out of my room into my friend's across the hall to share this video. I think that this reaction also proves the social nature of laughter and humor. Whenever you see a funny movie or something humorous happens to you, you want to share it. I think that I felt good about sharing the video and seeing my friends laugh because I shared something funny with them and validated my own reaction.

Although with outlets like YouTube, video text messaging, and a plethora of other technology laughing alone is readily accessible and nowadays acceptable, I think that humor and laughter are innately social aspects of life. Sure, I may sit and chuckle to myself while I watch Netflix alone or trip and fall while alone, but I would say that more times than not I retell these experiences to my family or friends or show them clips of the show in order to share the humorous experience.