It’s 2024, and I am 60 years old, and tonight I wheeze-laughed myself to tears watching clips of The Masturbating Bear, which, prior to today, I had no knowledge of.
Wheeze-laughing is something I feel I inherited. I fondly remember my family watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was new to the Dallas area in the 70s; we watched it when visiting my great-grandparents home in Ennis, Texas. And it was, I believe, during the Bicycle Repair Man sketch that my father had a prolonged bout of that same wheezing laugh. It was the first time I saw my father responding to humor in a very outward manner. I’m sure I had seen him laugh before but this was different. It was a giddy fit of uncontrolled laughter, and I think even my mother hadn’t seen him respond to something that way. It rarely happened again for the rest of his life.
Tonight, after the bear videos, I stumbled upon a string of YouTube videos from the Flying Circus show (Cheese Shop, Dead Parrot, Communist Quiz, my beloved Fish Slapping Dance, and more), and for about two hours I wheezed and gut-laughed my way through the night’s nostalgia. It was glorious.