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Originally Posted by Shamou I'll let you spend 20 minutes with my mother-in-law and you'll know what annoying is...
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How do you laugh? Read some of Shamou's posts. I regularly get a kick out of his sense of humor, this post included.
Part of laughing, though, is not taking life too seriously. To laugh about any particular topic, you have to be able to step back, remove your attachments to whatever's being poked fun at and let the humor in the situation guide your emotions for a brief time. Remember that just because something or someone is being made fun of, it doesn't necessarily mean the person doing it doesn't respect what he or she is poking fun at. It's usually the opposite. People rarely try to find humor in something they completely disrespect, dislike or even hate.
As an illustration, I'll tell you a joke that was related to me by my wife's great aunt:
Q: What does an old woman have between her breasts that a young woman doesn't?
A: Her belly button.
Now there are a thousand ways that someone could find that joke either not funny or even offensive. You could easily take the view that I'm disrespecting old ladies for no reason, but you could also step back and focus on the fact that this joke highlights something that happens to everyone in a funny way: the wrinkles and sags we all see as we age. Back that up with a ridiculous, exaggerated mental picture of a woman whose breasts have sagged so far they touch her waist and it becomes funny.
This brings me to another point: being able to visualize a joke helps tremendously when trying to see the humor. Humor is also spontaneous and if you overthink it, it disappears.
So my advice would be to step back, don't take things too seriously and don't think too hard. Just enjoy the moment and the laughter should come naturally.