I Won't Give You Up Whoopi Cushion, Tina Fey

I'm trying to imagine New York City if the economy got so bad that gossip girls, in their aging Tori Burches, had to camp out in long lines for free government bread and blocks of cheddar; if former Wall Street traders sold found junk, laid out on tattered blankets on the sidewalk; if higher-education families packed up their Brooklyn Heights brownstones into their Subarus, and then lived out of those Subarus on the side of a dusty and neglected Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I try to imagine the city's flashy bars filled with tattered and down-trodden patrons.  I imagine shanty towns, lining the sparkling skyline, in the shadows of the ghost-inhabited luxury apartment buildings.

In talking with my co-worker/friend about recent subway and bus fare hikes, my co-worker/friend said, 

"The city's going to go insane.  People are going to go insane.  It'll be like that movie, Summer of Sam, where everyone runs loose in the streets and throws garbage cans and stuff." 

I wonder-- how bad would it have to get before I consider giving up something essential that more than likely my grandfather would have deemed a luxury?

I don't want to think about life without cable, without internet in my apartment, without my cell phone, without my gym membership, without my contact lenses, or my hair dryer.  I don't want to think about it because it's all too possible, frankly.  I've weighed these things on my could-I-do-without-it scale as of late.    

If I did without these things I'd be cut off from the world, out of touch, I'd be blind as a bat, chubby, and my hair would be a mess every day.  I can see that alter reality and I can tell you I don't like it one bit.  

But there's something I could never do without- ever.  There's one thing I could never even envision my life, my daily existence, without- and that's laughter.  

I mean, the news is pretty grim.  It's easy to get sucked into the sadness and the worry.  But I refuse to stop laughing.

The other day this jerky producer at my job walked past me in the hallway.  As he breezed by he said, 

"How are you?"  And without pause, pointed at me:  "Don't laugh."

I'm sorry but it's just not possible.  

Today, another co-worker/friend came to my desk to say, "hi."  He is notoriously funny.  And instead of saying "hi," he announced for the whole newsroom,

"What did I tell you about personal emails at work!?  Stop it!!"  

When everyone looked up, there I was laughing. 

I don't know where the heck any of us would be, mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally-- if we couldn't laugh.  If we couldn't laugh at ourselves and our pitiable situations, as things crumble.  Or as they crash and burn.  

I like to laugh really loud at a good joke- even when I'm down, even when the office is quiet, and maybe we're all quiet and somber with fear of running out of money, with the fear of losing our jobs, thinking about how the company we work for continues to ask for more and more and we're  contemplating how much more we can give and still do our jobs to the standards we once had the time to which to hold ourselves.  I like to laugh loudest then, I think, because it reminds people, it reminds me, that there is a lightness to our beings.  We often forget this when we are so focused on the changes around us. 

As things get worse, I actually find it much easier to make fun of myself.  I am less funny and less humored by others when I'm trying to keep up appearances and I'm busy pretending everything is great.  

Everything does not appear to be great in the world.  It seems the ship is sinking-- quickly at times, slowly at others.  But if there's one thing I'm certain of through all this dark ambiguity, it's that I'm going to go down laughing.