THIS morning, I woke up to the sound of heavy breathing. Now before you get excited, it was only my dog. Soon as I opened up my eyes, she threw up on me. It was hard not to laugh. Of all the things I’d imagine waking up to in my life, it wasn’t this.
A few minutes later, I am walking my other (non-pukey) dog in the park, and I heard riotous laughter coming from a group of women. Curious to find out the source of their mirth, I inched closer, my dog even closer. Turned out they were having laughter therapy, the kind you read about where you just break out into laughter, and keep laughing until you’re exhausted.
There was this one leader who, with hands clasped, went to each and every one of her friends and laughed in their face. And they would laugh back. It was the second funniest thing to happen to me this morning.
The night before, I had watched “Bullet Train”. It’s like a parody of all the action movies ever made – Speed, Snakes On A Plane, Kill Bill, Magic Mike (now that’s action of another kind). You start off squeamish – there’s a lot of cutting, chopping, slicing, piercing, you get the picture – but you end up laughing. The last scene, just when you think it’s ended, had everyone in the theatre cracking up in communal laughter.
What a thing that is, to laugh together at the same thing.
Later in the lift, we were still laughing with another couple who thought it was the funniest movie they had seen this year.
The best thing about the movie is Brad Pitt. He’s aged beautifully in every way. He’s now eye candy that knows how to laugh at himself, and he brings his full acting chops to the table with this outing. He’s become an ironic, comedic, action hero/villain/hunk who doesn’t take himself too seriously.
To me, it was the second funniest movie I had watched in recent weeks. The funniest in which I practically fell off my chair laughing is “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. It’s like with this movie, Michelle Yeoh has decided to shatter all perceptions about her “everything everywhere all at once”. It’s like, she’s having a good laugh and she wants you to laugh with her. Her character runs a laundromat (tick), her fantasy character is a kung fu kick-a.. proponent … the movie is so ridiculous it’s hilarious.
I like it that Brad Pitt and Michelle Yeoh are not afraid to make fools of themselves at this stage of their career.
I think it’s one of the most courageous traits a leader can have – to laugh at yourself, to be laughed at, to laugh with and generally not to take yourself too seriously. Indeed, it was one of the earliest bits of advice I got from a mentor – soon as you know you are taking yourself too seriously, laugh.
Which is what those women in the park were presumably doing.
So back to the walk with my other non-puking dog, and I got to thinking about the funniest travel experiences I ever had. As I swiped through the greying cells that maketh my memory, I realised they were all linked to near-danger-or-death experiences.
I suppose the fact that I lived to tell the tale made it funny. Like the time I was sleeping in a luxury tent in Botswana and an elephant started eating the tree just outside the tent and excited to see an elephant at close quarters, I opened the window (meaning I pulled back the velcro and yes, there’s velcro in luxury heaven) and rudely awaken a sleeping scorpion, which promptly leapt into the air, landed on my friend’s arm and stung him. To cut a long story short, he survived. And we laughed after.
Deep into my reminiscing about funny travel experiences, I heard someone shouting, “Stop, stop”. My well-trained dog and I obeyed. A man wielding a huge apparatus which looked like a video camera was filming a group of six men, dressed in those ridiculously-tight attire that holds in “everything everywhere all at once”, and they were just about to commence their action biking scene for who-knows-how-many-takes when we walked into the frame.
I laughed, apologised. My dog barked, agreed. The men snarled, irritated.
Honestly, some people just take themselves too seriously. I mean, for laughing out loud, which would you rather be? The laughing women or the tightly-attired men?
So as you begin your weekend, think about what was your funniest travel experience, tell it to your friends and have a laugh. We need more laughter in travel these days.
