When I came back to school at 29, after spending most of my twenties as a civilian, one thing I noticed was that it’s fun to laugh there. It’s fun to laugh in a classroom setting.
There are very few – maybe zero – equivalent social situations elsewhere in life. The class laugh is bonding. It transcends the social order.
Outside of school, you can laugh in a big group at the movies, or at another kind of show, but that laugh is loosely engineered, and more impersonal. The class laugh is spontaneous and unmanufactured. It’s a beautiful thing.
I have a short list of Ultimate Laughs. This is the best one.
Sara Lautman is a cartoonist. Her drawings and comics have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Awl, Bitch Magazine, The Morning News, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore.
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