"Emma, I just broke my foot again!"

Rachel called this out from our living room clutching her afflicted foot as Marybeth and I crouched around her, casting wide-eyed glances at one another. It seemed too ironic that earlier that day we were talking about how Rachel hadn't broken her foot yet that year; in fact, Marybeth had thrown away the boot cast during her last big cleaning session and we had all agreed that we hoped we'd never have to use it again. 
Emma, who had run upstairs to put on a dress to twirl around in during our living room dance party, rushed downstairs, dress partially unzipped, tag sticking out, the same wide-eyed look on her face. Rachel, tears streaming, explained how frustrated she was at herself for breaking her foot again, making it the fourth injury to the same foot in a two-year span. 

Of course, this was the middle of the coronavirus pandemic at 8:00 pm on a Thursday. A visit to the emergency room (or anything resembling a medical center, for that matter) meant possible exposure to the virus. We had no boot cast for Rachel to put on and nothing but ibuprofen, prayer, and ice packs to ease her pain. As we all sat there on our living room floor, with Rachel's foot propped on my leg as I applied an ice pack to her foot and tested moving it for signs of pain while Emma and Marybeth rubbed her back apologetically, the reality of our current lives began to sink in. The dance party was our attempt at finding fun and excitement to fill our house with laughter once again, and we were all laughing at one another and getting goofier all the time when Rachel twisted her ankle and went down. 

Yet, instead of sitting in that moment of crushing reality, of the fragility of our lives and of the world around us, we started pondering the merits of solid ice packs versus frozen peas as a better coolant to apply to a wound and laughing about the irony of Rachel breaking her foot at the start and end of the school year (a "gimpy" sandwich, as we deemed it). We giggled about how clumsy Rachel is and soon were laughing and loving the fact that we had one another to laugh with. 

 
She's not clumsy, she just failed her dexterity test. Or has a bad case of toe fungus.
As the crisis grew, I began to wonder why humor seems to be the most effective self-soothing tool in the middle of this pandemic. What is it about humor that touches us deeply and helps us cope with reality? In my search for answers, I came across this article about the physical effects of laughter from Stanford. I learned that laughter reduces stress levels, increases resilience by regulating emotions, and even boosts the human immune system.

Laughter improves our relationships and makes the world a better place. I was amazed at all the ways that our bodies respond to laughter in positive ways. As I continued to read, I learned that making jokes out of dark, difficult, or negative experiences creates a very powerful perspective change and re-appraises the negative experience into a more manageable, playful one. This shift allows for greater creativity and flexibility in the human mind.

 
Wearing a face covering before covid-19: robber, thief

Wearing a face covering during covid-19: model citizen

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So, perhaps our bodies knew what was best for us in that moment of intense reality, stress, and fear as we huddled around Rachel and her freshly injured foot. As Marybeth said later as we reflected on that moment, "laughter really is the best medicine. It really does change your mood when you can just smile and have a good time with people. Laughter lightens my mood and it takes away that heavy stress on myself knowing that I can make those jokes." 

As our world is filled with a lot of new and overwhelming experiences (i.e. toilet paper shortages, new buzz words like "social distancing", frightening footage of doctors and nurses in hazmat-like suits taking care of patients on ventilators), it seems like laughter has become a necessary coping mechanism for many people. Rachel said that comedy "takes peoples' minds off of what is currently going on. It can be a healthy distraction from the reality of coronavirus, and it brings a sense of camaraderie to people who are for example sharing memes on social media." This social aspect of humor especially seems critical right now in a time when we are isolated from one another and seeking those social connections. 

 
At lunch with my mom, sister, and sister's fiancée. my mom said "Wait! Let me socially distance myself from the camera!"

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As Emma put it, "We can't as humans stomach everything at once. Humor is a way to soften the blow of things. It helps us to see the joy in things even despite a hard time." We have learned to embrace moments of laughter and to give them their proper place alongside the real worry and heartbreak we have over the trauma and difficulty that our world is facing. Though some days it feels like anxiety will crush our spirits and causes me to wash my hands so often that they bleed, I am so grateful for the ways that laughter has helped to keep me and those around me going. I have learned to embrace comedy as a healthy coping mechanism-of course, not using it to belittle any suffering or hurt, but rather to invite a new perspective to things.
 
Me every day of my life prior to coronavirus: germs are good for you! Disinfectants create super-germs and are bad! 

Me during coronavirus: *scrubs everything every day, wipes everything I touch with a disinfectant wipe*

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In the end, Rachel's foot is badly sprained but not bad enough to go to urgent care, so she limps around the house and we joke about it at least once per day. Less than a week after her foot injury, she ended up totaling her car in a car accident, but thankfully she was completely unharmed. She and her parents laughed about how the car is cursed and giggled about the irony of her losing her last mode of transportation. As Rachel put it, "if I think about everything that's happened to me all at once it brings me down.

 

But, in the wise words of Chubawumba, 'I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never going to get me down.'"