Parties

I do not know why this idea did not come into my mind until just now, but I realized that I probably do most of my awkward laughter at parties, and in situations where I know I can get away with laughing and not offending people. At a party, you are moving around, introducing yourself to a lot of people, people don't know who you are and you don't know who they are. When you suddenly have a conversation with someone at a party, and something awkward happens, and you laugh, the two people, sometimes more, that are involved in the conversation don't freak out when the other laughs, and they often choose to follow this laughter in response to awkwardness with more laughter. When I say that the laughter is responsive to awkwardness, I mean that clearly the conversation has ended and there is now going to be some kind of awkward silence. At this moment, you start to laugh and try to pretend like you are laughing at something that you are recollecting from two minutes ago in the conversation. This second laughter, I think, doesn't make the situation more awkward, but it actually makes the situation funny, and something worth laughing at. Because, now when there is a collective laughter, it is almost like an unspoken agreement that you both think the situation is awkward, which thus makes it funny, which thus eliminates needing to laugh out of pure awkwardness, which then makes it easier to walk away from the conversation with some stranger that you probably didn't even benefit from regardless.

Library

Today in the library, my best friend was talking online to this boy that everyone has the biggest crush on. He is incredibly awkward himself, but everyone always wants to impress him. I told her that he was also in the library when she told me that they were talking online, but she didn't seem to care. Five minutes later, she got up to go the bathroom and said she couldn't hold it. In fear of peeing her pants, she said that if she ran to the bathroom, she wouldn't be able to make it so she had to walk very slowly (which didn't really make sense in my mind at the time). Five minutes later, she walks back, practically in tears, but tears of laughter. I asked her what happened, and she said that she was walking to the bathroom really slowly and was taking really small steps without really moving her legs. She then did an impression of it for me, and I told her to hurry up and tell me what had happened. She said that when she was walking to the bathroom awkwardly, she was talking to herself (as she often does), turned the corner, and then the boy was right there awkwardly staring at her. She said that it was the most awkward thing she's ever had to deal with, and that her only reaction was to hysterically laugh in his face.

Here, my friend, lets call her Sarah, and the boy, let's call him Dave. Sarah wanted so badly to not embarrass herself on the way to the bathroom, and everyone wants to try and impress Dave. When Sarah laughed, I think she was laughing because not only was she a, ridiculously uncomfortable, and b, super embarrassed, but the situation was also very incongruous and full of irony. What were the chances that right when Sarah had to go to the bathroom, Dave was going to leave his study room and walk by Sarah making a fool of herself? Here, I think we can say that her laughter wasn't solely a natural response to embarrassment and awkwardness, but that her laughter was also a response to the incongruity and irony of seeing the boy she likes, needing to go to the bathroom, and deadly stares at each other when they were literally talking five minutes before.