Nola Studiola: What makes you laugh?

LB: My husband. Since the moment we met 20 years ago, we’ve been cracking each other up.

AB: I like hearing that. I think Christianne Sanchez also answered her Studiola question this way. I think it’s fascinating the way two people’s sense of humor (senses of humor? humour?) interact, and I would think, meld in some ways.

When I first met Tyler, all we did was laugh. He’s the first person I’ve dated who I literally cracked up all the time around. I have had many close friends who do this to me–Shawn Bonner, Abbye Meyer, Emily Wender, Jen Baltruzak-Prakash, Amber Ankowski, Susan Greenwald, Allie Hersh, Barry Schwartz, Alyson Pomerantz–but after reading Ms. Brown’s answer and thinking more deeply about it–I think Tyler is the only close comic energy that I ended up dating. And isn’t that funny?

We laughed about the new world (to each of us) of Baton Rouge, we laughed about pot belly pigs for pets, we laughed when I stole a chair and used it to sit in a long line at a bank. (I still have the chair, unlike the chair that Jen Prakash and I stole from a bar that one night, which is probably still in her 8th grade classroom.)

We laughed when we both took LSU id photos with the same crazed, frenetic hilarious cock eyed expression. We laughed about ghosts who lived in the boiler room of Allen Hall, we laughed about dogs who spend their days in ratty robes, watching daytime soaps and slurping sherry milkshakes through a straw. We laughed about the way Baton Rougeans throw away a lot of trash in the Wal Mart parking lot. We laughed at the wild dog flyers handed out in the Garden District. We laughed about a lot of things that aren’t funny except that they are.

Tyler sings a lot of the time. And my girl self is ALWAYS singing. But what we have in common is that we both sing made up, absurd songs about the things we see and usually (though not always) we work in fantastical personality changes for a nearby animal. He helped me remember my songs and around him, I’m not embarassed to sing them.

When we first met, Tyler and I sat on a couch and watched a small dog try to work its way out of a box. This was very funny.

We used to laugh all the time.

I have what I call “Bad Brain” days that eek into weeks and months if I’m not careful (or blessed with stress relief tactics) and I have come to realize that for me, it is very easy to stop laughing but it is very easy to start again.