LOL!

What makes you laugh? Does Jerry Seinfeld tickle your funny bone, or is it the antics of two-year-olds? We laugh when our favourite uncle revs up his side-splitting humour, and we chuckle politely at dad jokes. We even giggle when we are nervous.

Shaina loves to laugh- at silly magicians and unsavoury sounds, when she swings too high or for no reason. Her teacher sends us videos of her leading her friends in raucous laughter on the playground. She laughs hysterically when her siblings fool around or when she uses an edgy word. Unlike the rest of us, she can laugh repeatedly at the same thing. Charlie Chaplin claimed that a day without laughter is a day wasted. By his standards, Shaina never wastes a day.

I write this while Shaina entertains her older sister in New York via WhatsApp video. She is doing a full Broadway performance, singing one of her favourite songs, jiggling and gesturing like a rockstar. She has just paused briefly in mid-song to pull a funny face close-up in the phone camera. Now, she chuckles and proudly announces: “She laughing!” Shaina delights in getting others to laugh.

Or watching them laugh. On Sunday, I took her for pizza. Two tables away from us, a pair of preteen girls sat whispering and giggling. Shaina loved it, pointing and telling me they were laughing. She laughed along loudly for good measure. If the girls noticed she had joined their chuckling, they didn’t show it.

Shaina’s eyes sparkle with mischief. She has a wicked sense of humour and does goofy things to make us laugh. She will sing like a tenor, plaster stickers on my face or dip her cupcake in humus to get a laugh. On the way to school each morning, she tries half a dozen tricks to get her little niece to giggle. She knows exactly when to mock-frown to get a chuckle out of her mom. Shaina wordlessly shares humour through gestures, poses and unexpected antics. She laughs from deep inside her until she can’t catch her breath. When she rolls with merriment, we laugh along- partly because her giggles are catchy, mainly because we are excited by her humour.

Because Shaina speaks so little, we don’t know what she thinks or how much she processes. Her EQ is advanced, and she detects emotional nuances with laser precision. But, how developed is her mind? Her drawings are still rudimentary; she cannot write her name and doesn’t get arithmetic. Still, we believe our nonverbal little girl has a keen mind. Her sense of humour, an educational expert explained, indicates she is a high-functioning.

Edward de Bono, the father of “Lateral Thinking”, called humour “by far the most significant activity of the human brain”. In that case, Shaina is switched on. Her laugh connects her with others when words fail her and endears her to strangers. Her humour lifts the mood at home almost daily.

Laugh on, Shaina! Your repertoire of song, dance and laughter is a tonic. We pray that your belly laughs will tickle us for many years.