I promise I can spell... (Unrestrained Laughter #2)

I think one of the most unrestrained incidents of laughter happens when you are laughing at yourself. Wait, let me set the scene:

It was a Friday night in the BLUU Ballroom, my friends and I were going to the Murder Mystery Dinner to celebrate my birthday, and also because who is going to turn down free food? We were turning in our ballots to decide who the murderer was. Since I was the birthday girl, and the loudest one at the table, I was allowed to handle our ballot. Right before I went to turn in the ballot, I realized that I had spelled the suspect’s name wrong. It wasn’t just a little wrong, it was extremely wrong. I tried to hold onto the ballot and fix the name, but the sheriff that was collecting the ballots assured me that A) they don’t grade on spelling, and B) it would in no way affect my GPA. So a little unwilling, I turned over my ballot and all was fine. Until he came back a few minutes later, chuckling and saying that he had never had anyone spell the suspect’s name like that. Already, my friends were cracking up because the WRITING major couldn’t spell something properly. Also I was sitting at an all honors college table, so it was even worse.

The laughter would have eventually stopped if that was the last time it was brought up, but I was not that lucky. Before the sheriff called out the ballots, he mentioned that he wouldn’t count spelling. My table again broke out into loud peals of laughter. I’m pretty sure my face was bright red at this point from a combination of embarrassment and laughter. We anxiously waited for our table name to be called, and finally it was. The actors proceeded to laugh at my spelling and made fun of it for a few minutes. I had spelled PonZee, as Ponsy. They spelled it out to the crowd and tried it with a new accent. The entire incident was hilarious to the ballroom, and to my table. But, it didn’t stop there.

The actor who played PonZee, stopped in front of our table and growled out “Who did it?” My table quickly rejoiced and pointed at me. I had no words, I was laughing too hard to say anything in my defense. He quickly came over to my side of the table, looked down at my program and pointed out his name. It was already opened to the page… I smiled and my table continued laughing.

This incident was hilarious because you wouldn’t expect the writing major to be a bad speller. I was supposed to be the one who could write the name down correctly, and I failed. Big time. It was also funny because of how the actors dealt with my misspellings, I knew that none of the teasing was actually meant to upset me and it was pretty funny. A lot of the humor in this story is also situational. We had seen people get teased all night, we were at a funny murder mystery, and so we were already in the mindset to laugh and be entertained. This helped us find an ordinary situation funny. My friends seemed to find the incident extremely funny, and it made the night a lot more fun. I think that my willingness to laugh at myself when I misspelled the name helped my friends find the situation funny. I knew that no one was actually being mean in their laughter, and I was laughing too. Plus, it is almost always better to laugh than sulk when embarrassed and it’s not like it actually affected my GPA (thank God).