Gold Rush

Driving in to work today, I heard a great story on OPB about a doctor in India who prescribes Charlie Chaplin DVDs to his patients.  He practices ayurvedic medicine, which looks kind of interesting.

I love the image of sick people hobbling in to exchange their silent movie for another.  It really made me smile all day long.

Also, evidently, in India, they have groups that get together to laugh.  Imagine getting together with a bunch of friends and instead of griping about the things that aren’t working in your lives, you just sat and laughed.  It reminds me of the “ha ha” game we used to play at sleepovers.  You remember that game?

Someone lies on their back and another person lies on their back, putting their head on the other person’s stomach.  Everyone lies down so that everybody has their head on someone’s stomach, and everyone is connected.  Make sense?  Good.  Then the first person in the chain says “ha”.  The second person says “ha-ha”, and so on.  The goal is to get through everyone, increasing the ha’s as you go – without laughing.

This is nearly impossible.  The word “ha” makes your stomach jerk, which makes the other person’s head bounce, which is funny.  Pretty soon everyone is totally laughing, which makes everyone’s heads bounce around.  Seriously, try this at the next cocktail party you go to.

Wouldn’t that be excellent?  Why don’t we do these things as adults?  I do these things, but I don’t get invited to a lot of cocktail parties.  I’m not sure there’s a correlation.