Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Yesterday somebody asked me a stupid question at work, then followed it with a 'Cheer Up!' They then looked at me with a big cheesy grin and expected me to do the same. Oh, so you're in a good mood so I must instantly become the same without any effort on your part. At least do something to make me laugh.

Cheer Up'ers, I find, are generally nerdy people. People who have great cause to be miserable but are too stupid to notice. They're the kind of people who reel off a never ending repertoire of irritating sayings like, 'You don't have to be mad to work here but it helps.' Or they're the most likely people to approach you when conducting a clearly menial task and ask you if you're 'Having Fun Yet?'

A while ago one of these cheery do-gooders announced to me that, 'Laughter is the best medicine.' I would normally just ignore them but on this point I simply had to disagree. The blanket use of laughter to cure all ills is simply impractical. I said,

'Where there may be some limited truth to this belief, surely in the case of a patient suffering from severe facial burns it would not be an advisable course of action? While in this situation it may be a good idea to maintain a sense of humour, the patient would need to learn to do so without facial involvement which I'm sure is almost impossible.'