Banned from Funny Movies

Since I've been pregnant I've had this thing where, if I start laughing pretty hard about something, it gets out of control fast and practically becomes an emotional breakdown. It's hard to describe, but it will start as giggling and quickly turn into five minutes of laughing so hard I'm gasping and tears are streaming down my face. Emotionally it's one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced because I have almost no control over it whatsoever. By the end I am pretty much crying.

The first couple of times it happened it was as a result of something my brothers said around the dinner table. The third time Mom took a picture of me by the moving truck and I acted like I was picking my nose. When she showed me the photo I was so amused by it that within seconds I was almost passed out on the lawn. This is embarassing, but the fourth time I was actually alone. I was at work and it was time to go home, so I quickly checked Facebook before shutting my computer down. My friend Kristen had posted pics from our camping trip in which she'd done an "extreme close-up series" of all of our faces. I started giggling immediately and couldn't stop even as I walked down the hallway, out of the office and into my car. By the time I was pulling out of the parking lot I had completely lost it and had to wipe my eyes to see the road.

Last night Jono and I decided I was no longer allowed to go to funny movies in the theater. We closed on our house yesterday, and Jono got his deviated septum fixed this week (!!!), so to celebrate we went out for dinner and then hit the cheap theater afterwards to see Get Smart. We love watching "The Office", and Steve Carell, a character from the show, is in the movie. Things were going smoothly and I wasn't really finding it that funny until the SC character and this secret-agent woman have to go through a sewer in order to secretly enter a building. SC says, "James Bond never had to go into a sewer. There's poop and rats down here. Oh great, look, there's a rat riding on a piece of poop." My mental image of the rat riding on the piece of poop combined with how sarcastically the line was delivered just did me in. The plot moved on but a few minutes later I still couldn't stop laughing about that one line. I sunk down into my seat and covered my mouth to muffle things, but I'm sure people could still hear me. Throughout the rest of the movie it happened two more times, so that by the end when we walked out I was relieved to be going to the car so that I could recover.

I guess I can't totally blame this phenomenon on being pregnant, since the only time I got in trouble in first grade was because I couldn't stop laughing about the opera music we were listening to in music class. I was sent out to the hallway, and I remember vividly that a moment later the pastor walked by and saw me standing there. Growing up I also had this problem during devotions after supper. The difference is how powerful the wave of laughter is now, how emotional it becomes, and the frequency. From this point on I can watch funny movies in the privacy of my home, but no longer in public, at least until I give birth.

If anyone else has had this happen to them, I'd love to hear about it :)