Story 48 Learning to Laugh

to be born here. Oh, how he would have been willing to sell his soul for a nice meal of doggie poo, but the dog owners scooped the doggie droppings into plastic bags almost before they reached the ground. He could barely catch the smell of it and, for a fly, dog poo is probably as tempting as the smell of popcorn is for you at the movies.

When the fly couldn’t get what he wanted, he started to get angry. He would get them back, he thought to himself. So he started buzzing people. Making loud noises—especially around their faces— had them swatting at him, but he dodged their swinging hands quite easily and kept up his pattern of annoyance. If he was really angry, fluttering around their food just as they put it on the table to serve up a meal really got to them; unfortunately, it just left him feeling hungrier than ever. The best trick he found was to buzz the face of one of their young babies. That was a guaranteed way to upset them.

Having explored every nook and cranny of the town, our fly winged his way into the countryside hoping that there it might at least find something. A nice pat of cow or horse manure would make a delicious meal, but the farmers were as tidy as the people in the town. They raked up after their horses and cows, leaving not a single, pooey morsel for the poor fly to find.

Just then the fly’s nose began to draw him like a magnet to the rotting aromas of a potentially delicious meal. Soon he had the town garbage dump in sight. Ah-ha, said the fly to himself, Why haven’t I thought of it before? Even the tidiest of towns have to dump their garbage somewhere.

To the fly it was like a huge smorgasbord laid out for a meeting of kings and queens. He plunged into the garbage dump, rolled in the smelly muck as if taking a bath, and began to gorge himself on the trash. This was great! There were putrid fish bones, rotting vegetables, and—what any decent fly would die for—his favorites: stinking, sloppy dog poo beside a puddle of vomit. He ate and ate, then ate some more till he could eat not another mouthful. However, when he found some days-old, rotten, moldy, green custard in the bottom of a grubby plastic container, he couldn’t resist the desire for desert.

Finally satisfied, the fly flapped his wings to take off, but he was so heavy with his meal of garbage that he couldn’t lift into the air. At first he didn’t know what to do but just sit in the dump. There he might be swamped by the next truckload of trash or stomped on by a worker’s boot. He had to find a solution for his problem.

Looking around, the fly saw a long-handled shovel leaning against the wall of the garbage workers’ shed. He slowly dragged his big fat body across the ground to the shovel, up the shovel handle, and right to the very, very top. From there he launched himself into the air, hovered briefly, and plummeted to the ground with a big splat.

And the moral to the story? It’s this: Don’t fly off the handle if you are full of trash.

STORY 48 LEARNING TO LAUGH

Therapeutic Characteristics

Problems Addressed

■ Unhappiness ■ Lack of enjoyment ■ Difficulty in laughing or having fun

Resources Developed

■ Learning to smile ■ Learning to laugh ■ Building positive feelings

Outcomes Offered

■ Smiles ■ Laughter ■ Fun

Clary sat in front of a mirror, one of those with light bulbs all the way around its sides. He painted a big red smile on his face, and then drew a black line around the edge to highlight it. He painted on some wide-open, bright eyes that seemed to twinkle with mirth. On top of his head he placed a ginger-colored, unruly wig of hair, then a crooked top hat with a big yellow flower on the front. He ran a plastic tube from the flower down the back of his head, over his shoulder and along his arm. He pulled on a big floppy jacket with brightly colored checks and pushed the tube into a big bulb of water in his pocket. Finally, he slipped into a pair of overgrown shoes and carefully stepped out of his caravan, walking through the canvas flap of the big tent and entering the arena. Almost as soon as the crowd of people saw him they burst out laughing. You see, Clary was the circus clown.

He tripped over his long floppy shoes and people laughed out loud. He walked up to a person in the front row and squeezed the bulb in his pocket. As the flower squirted water over that man, the people laughed even louder. There was no doubt about it, thought the ringmaster, Clary was definitely the funniest clown ever.

After the show Herman, the trapeze artist, visited Clary in his caravan. Clary was wiping the smile off his face, and underneath the makeup his real mouth didn’t lift up at the corners at all. As he wiped away the sparkling painted eyes, his own eyes looked dull and sad.

“What’s up?” asked Herman.

“Well,” answered Clary, “it’s easy to make other people laugh, but I can’t laugh myself. Even back at school I found it easier to make others laugh. I felt different from the other kids. I wasn’t good at sports like most of them and I didn’t really excel in my studies. In fact, I was often at the bottom of the class—but one thing I could do was to get others to laugh. I would trip over like I do when I enter the circus ring and the kids would laugh. If I went to eat a sandwich at lunch and it pushed up my nose instead of going into my mouth, they would think it was funny. I guess I did what I did well, and went on being the class clown, but I never felt really happy.”

“Okay,” said Herman, feeling sorry for his friend. “If a laugh is difficult for you, perhaps a smile might be easier.” They both stood and looked in the mirror as Clary attempted a smile.

“Not good enough,” announced Herman.

“What do you mean?” asked Clary.

“All you did,” replied Herman, “was lift the sides of your lips a little. That’s not good enough. I remember reading a while ago that a brain doctor named Dr. Duchenne, who lived more than a hundred years ago, would stick needles into people’s faces and give them electric shocks through the needles to try and stimulate the facial muscles. One of the things that Dr. Duchenne found was that there’s a difference between a pretend smile and a genuine smile. When we pretend to smile we just