Laughter is good medicine

I have always gladly suffered a raunchy sense of humor. I think it is one aspect of my character I can blame on being raised with three brothers. I think as a woman, who by that definition has marginal status (a sociological term for groups of people who are either excluded from or outright persecuted by the dominant culture of a society--think gays, Jews or Mormons), I have used humor as an inclusive tool. Especially in the business I am in, male-dominated, I learned early that if I can make you laugh, you are much more likely to listen to what I have to say, since there's a strong possibility of a payoff, a feel-good laugh from my humor.

I believe that some of the character defects (if we view my sense of humor as a defect as it's been viewed at times) we cultivated before we recovered saved our lives. I know getting thrown in a jail cell in Oakland full of sisters at the height of the racial tension in the 70s made me funny fast. Good humor defuses tension and if used appropriately, jumps boundaries like culture or race or gender.

Yesterday I went to a noon meeting I began to attend last year after my liver transplant. I grew to really like it, but it's very different from my home group here in town. First, it's a smoking meeting three days a week. There's also a ton of crosstalk, especially by one senior member who feels he must comment on everything everyone says. Third, the language is pretty horrific and perhaps I'll blog on that topic soon. But there is a lot of laughter and yesterday was no exception.
We had a newcomer, so the focus of the meeting was about our first meetings and how we felt in those first few days. One gal said that she was sure that she was coming into a room full of one-toothed people and she drove 30 miles away from town so no one would recognize her. The crosstalker at the meeting immediately took out his upper plate and gave her a toothless grin. Unfortunately, he was looking in my direction when he did it, so it was pretty gross. But it did remind me of a story.

My home group in Arizona, Hip, Slick and Kool, had at its center when I got clean a few- bubbles-off woman, a former biker who would later be caught up, although mistakenly, in the Buddhist murders that rocked Phoenix. She had about 17 years clean when she had all her teeth pulled. When she got her dentures, she stood at the podium and took out her teeth to show other recovering addicts that "You can stay clean through anything."

A guy sitting in the meeting said, sotto voce, "I'm glad she didn't have a hysterectomy." I told that story at yesterday's meeting in response to the our crosstalker, and it got a big laugh. I told it for the newcomer.

I know that when I walked into the rooms first in 1983, I was in hopeless misery. There was not one darn thing funny about my life. I had come from a family where humor was abundant, but in my addiction, I lost the ability to laugh. One of the big draws to the rooms for me was the humor, the laughter that each community that is marginalized uses to identify itself, to say "Hey, we are important, too!" Twelve-step programs have their own language, their own humor and through it we form a cohesive bond.

When I'm traveling and in strange towns, I'll walk into a building where the meeting is held, not knowing where to go. Some may be drawn by the smell of the coffee, but I listen for the laughter. That's how I know where the meeting is. I orient myself through laughter.

When I had only a few weeks clean, my father, whom I adored and whom I've blogged about before, said, "Hey, you know you're getting your sense of humor back?" I hadn't noticed, really. That's why we have others in our lives, to point out the things that are important that we may miss.

I thank God that my sense of humor returned, because it's helped me walk through a lot of difficulty. Although my humor is a little over the top at times, it's mine, and its another thing that keeps me coming back.