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.

Tell Us Coach.

You wouldn't expect a lot of laughter in a huddle in a basketball game where you are down by 19. You wouldn't expect your coach to be the one causing the laughter either. Over the weekend, during our game to tie for first place in the Ivy League, the least thing that I expected in fact happened. In a huddle, down by 19, the team bursted out laughing, yet again at Coach's expense.

Trying to motivate us, which Coach does in the weirdest of ways, Coach decided to tell us what the opposing team supposedly said about us before the game. Stumbling for words, and turning bright purple as usual, she started screaming, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAID BEFORE THE GAME? DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY SAID?" The team sat there and anticipated what we assumed to be some grave insult that we would never be able to forgive. Instead, Coach said something that she doesn't realize girls in our generation hear everyday, probably more than they should.

" 'LET'S KILL THESE F**KING B*TCHES!' THATS WHAT THE SAID, I SWEAR, WE HEARD THEM SAY IT. THEY SAID IT, I SWEAR. I HEARD THEM."

No one was doubting you, Coach.

The second she said that, things got so incongruous and awkward that the team could only react with laughter. Coach sounded uncomfortable saying it, she looked uncomfortable saying it, and she was acting as if that was the worst insult you could ever say to a group of girls. She was trying so hard to motivate us, but she had no clue that it was just going to make us laugh instead. We were desperately looking for something to lighten the mood anyway, so we took advantage of the moment.

Coach is an older woman trying to fit into and relate to a generation in which she just doesn't belong. She digs herself into this deep holes where what she is doing cannot possibly be taking seriously. It instead just makes us feel so awkward and so confused that we just have to laugh. Maybe our laughter was to relieve the tension we felt from playing what was looking to be a horrible game, or maybe we laughed cause we actually wanted to cry at our situations instead. Whatever the deal was, however, we laughed, and the game took a turn for the better after that timeout.

Dating

Over the weekend, my friend, who has been seeing this guy for about 3 weeks, was supposed to go out on a legitimate date with him. She hasn't gone on a real "dinner date" in a long time, and even though she is comfortable around the guy, she felt incredibly awkward and kept trying to figure out ways to cancel.  When describing the situation, she would make up stupid excuses as to why she shouldn't have to go, and my friends and I just sat there and told her to shut up and go. After a few minutes, he happened to come to where we were coincidentally, and they began to talk about when they were going to meet up. The awkward switch turned on, and my friend could not stop giggling and laughing and smiling.
She kept using the words "awkward" and "uncomfortable" to describe how she felt about "this kind of stuff," and the second he walked in you could tell that is exactly how she felt. She looked so nervous, and whenever he asked her a simple question about when to meet up and where they want to go, my friend kept laughing and smiling while responding with a stupid question. It was such a weird situation to witness that the entire table stopped what they were doing and started focusing on their conversation, and then WE felt awkward and all started to laugh.

Based on my friend and the table's reaction, it is clear that laughter is a definite tool that people use when they feel uncomfortable. When the table and I laughed, it was half out of feeling so awkward having to watch the interaction, and it was half out of relief that we didn't have to be the ones going through what the couple was going through at that point. Listening in on the conversation, we could not help but laugh and say to ourselves "oh my god this is so awkward," something that I find myself saying a lot. Many of the situations I find myself and others in support the idea that people laugh when they are nervous and uncomfortable, and that they use it as a sort of mask to hide how they really feel. But, in reality, it just makes how uncomfortable they feel more obvious, and the situation even more awkward...