Ho Chi Minh Laugh

As my gift to you today, I would like to point you in the direction of this Ho-Chi-Minh Funny** post over at Mike Bevel, British Adventuress. Go read it first, and then come back here and finish reading my post. No really. Why are you still here? Go!!! (ps. It's rated PG).

Hm hm hm… waiting waiting…. Dum de dum de dum…

Okay. You had to read the post first so that I wouldn’t ruin it for you by telling you how hysterically funny I found it, and making your expectations shoot through the blogosphere (cuz that's big) and then you read it and get all disappointed – not that you would, cuz it’s so damn funny, but you know how that whole “this movie is the most stupenderiffic movie ever made” thing is when you actually go see the movie and then give it a giant “meh…”.

So anyways, maybe it’s lack of sugar (or surplus of), overactive brain chemicals, or exhaustion brought on by a busy weekend, but my guard was down and I laughed so hard that I was gasping for air and my stomach is still spasming seven minutes later. You know the expression ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing), well I was literally RITCL (in the chair). I laughed so hard and long that both cats curiously made their way to the doorway, stopped, and there they sat side by side, quietly staring at me in concern. By the time I got to the postscript, the little one was so worried about me that she jumped up on my lap and started licking my chin. I think she noticed the dangerous plummeting of my oxygen levels.

The thing is, who doesn’t have one of these beauties to share?! Sadly, not all of us can tell it quite like the British Adventuress can, or the world would be a better place. Soooo, my fine cyberfriends, click on the comment link below (otherwise known as
# PEOPLE CARE, and tell me your story… Come on, I’m begging you. Don’t be shy…

**Ho Chi Minh Laugh is a term coined by K & K due to two unfortunate incidents in Viet Nam, to describe the following phenomenon, or something that just wierdly, and unexpectedly, strikes you as THAT funny. Seriously, don’t judge me. You, too, have laughed at completely inappropriate times !!!!!

First incident: K & K are sitting in a darkened theatre at the interpretive center for the Cu Chi Tunnels (the tunnels that the Viet Cong used during the war). We are listening to the clear, sweet, high-pitched voice of a tiny Vietnamese lady narrate a video about said tunnels and the war for which they were built. The room is full of foreign and Vietnamese tourists listening earnestly to her commentary. As she narrates the video in her sweet little sing-song voice, she speaks the following line: “And the Americans came, running through ditches, shooting chickens, and children, and …” I have no idea what she said after that, because I was trying to stifle the fits of laughter that were exploding through me at that point without spitting anything through my nose or offending the nice tourists who were listening intently to the sweet little lady calmly recite atrocities in her tiny sing-song voice and putting the children right next to the chickens…

Incident Number Two: K & K visit the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. We line up for hours with thousands of Vietnamese people dressed in their finest clothing, in a line that stretches (every day) for many blocks around the huge monument housing HCM. Finally we are admitted to the mausoleum and amidst serious looking guards with machine guns, we respectfully and somberly shuffle past Uncle Ho (as he is affectionately known in VN) who is lying very seriously, preserved forever in a glass box. It is quite an interesting experience, and moving to see the emotions of many of those who have come to pay their respects.

A few days later, nerves and stamina worn down by a few eternal bus rides and the rigour of life as a traveler in VN, I am sitting on an old beat up school bus crammed in next to a women with chickens wriggling in a burlap sack underneath our feet and two babies on our laps as we tear around the sharp curves on the edge of the seven million foot cliff, cheating death at every turn, pondering the HCM experience. I think about the fact that he has been dead for something like forty years by now, I wonder how exactly they preserve a human being, and I consider the fact that once per year Uncle Ho makes a journey to Russia where they do maintenance on him. Apparently the Russians are experts, as they have preserved Lenin and Stalin. Mao Tse Tung is also preserved this way.

Anyway, (do not judge me, like I said, I was worn down and my nerves may have been a titch frayed…)… it suddenly struck me that Ho Chi Minh - - is stuffed. Stuffed. Stuffed. Strangely, this fact had not occurred to me before. The absurdity of life and humans and stuffing and everything else just washed over me and I started to giggle. The giggling turned into snorting, the snorting to full-on belly laugh, the belly laugh to hysterical laughter, and I laughed to that point where you lose all muscle control of your face and you know you look like a troll and you start to cry with laughing and you can’t breathe but you can’t stop but you can’t even remember why you are laughing but something is just so unbearably funny and now the fact that you are losing your mind is making you laugh even harder and if someone asks you what is funny you gasp and hack out some unintelligible syllables which makes you laugh harder and laugh harder and …

Anyways, you get the idea. For years after, all that had to be said to me was the words “Ho Chi Minh” or “stuffed” or “chickens and children” and I would be returned to a helpless pile of quivering hysteria, spewing tears and troll faces and hacks and gasps of laughter. That, my friends, is a Ho Chi Minh Laugh.

So my point is, everyone needs a Ho Chi Minh laugh now and then and if this post didn’t do it for you (it did for me) I hope you find your own today.

xoxo