The laugh.

Laughter isn’t always the best medicine.  In fact, it can result in anger, rage and—as is the case when I hear CCL’s laugh—the possibility for hate crimes to be committed.  While her laugh itself is obnoxious, that is not what would garner her a beating.  It’s the volume with which it is inflicted upon the rest of us that is awful.

For a frame of reference as to how obnoxious her laugh is: In the Golden Girls episode where Dorothy’s friend comes to visit and reveals that she’s a lesbian & then begins to have a crush on Rose, Dorothy was sharing a bed with Sophia & explaining all of these happenings, when Sophia meets it with a very particular laugh.  It’s more like a broken laugh.  It’s like, “Heh.  heh heh.”  Each chuckle is winded and blunt.  (Though it is funny to hear Sophia do it.)  Take that broken laugh, amplify it, and mix in a ridiculous giggle at the end.  That lovely combination would result in something comparable to the CCL laugh.  Alas, I digress as to the breakdown of the laugh…back to the volume issue.

I blame this need for robust guffawing on the cats.  You see, those cats keep her hostage in her townhouse, limiting her social interactions severely to where she doesn’t understand the concept of quiet laughter.  Instead, she seems to think that practically screaming her laughter makes something more hilarious and that those of us around her will then be curious about the cause for her laugh.  I am never curious.  I am, however, annoyed.  This is a frequent occurrence during conference calls, which makes it all the more bizarre because conference calls over operational procedures are never humorous enough to warrant large amounts of laughter.  Therefore, I am never curious about what she’s laughing at because I know in advance that I won’t think it’s funny.  Instead, it will result in me having to work extra hard to disguise my facial expressions (something that’s a challenge for me—no matter how hard I try), which would give away my thoughts of, “Could you be any crazier?”  Those facial expressions are never fun to give or receive.

Granted, not asking doesn’t always get me out of hearing about these pseudo-humorous moments.  Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard I try to hide or make myself unavailable, CCL still strikes and has to tell me about the most hilarious thing to ever exist.  Gratefully I’m not alone in these moments—CCL sometimes just feels the need to tell everyone in the office about the hilarity.  So, we all get to hear her go from cube-to-cube, regaling each individual with the exact same verbiage and exact same laughter at the exact same junctures in the story.  And then she starts discussing the cats—yes, the cats.  She takes the opportunity to tie something about changes to, say, job order entry procedures (as an example for how non-hilarious the story matter is each time) into a discussion about how her cats were last night and how naughty they were during morning play time.  (She gets up 45 minutes earlier than needed each morning in order to spend time playing with the cats; she claims that they are unmanageable if they don’t get their play time with her.) 

It is a vicious cycle of assault to the ears…and some days it’s all I’ve got in me to hold back from threatening to throw the cats into a wood chipper.  [Not that I own a wood chipper, nor would I ever abuse an animal, but the threat itself would be enough to inflict harm and make my point…]