Don Dafoe: ‘It’s Only Human To Laugh’

Don Dafoe: ‘It’s Only Human To Laugh’

By Don Dafoe

Contributor

In every culture, people laugh.

Don Dafoe

This universal response strikes me as odd. Under certain conditions, we blast out a noise. We chuckle, chortle, giggle, or guffaw. Some even snort. (One of my five sisters gave a boyfriend the gate because “he snorted when he laughed.”)

Often, the peculiar noise is accompanied by squinting, teeth baring, shoulder shaking, knee slapping, or belly bouncing.

When a friend laughs hard, we join in even if we didn’t get the joke. It’s all good. Laughing has health benefits. You’ve heard the expression, “Laughter is the best medicine.”

Anthropologists surmise laughter is rooted in the phenomenon of a victory whoop. Someone else is the butt of a joke. We find it funny because we feel su