Looks Like Someone Needs to be Tickled

A panhandler approached a college kid and asked for spare change. The kid said, “No, you’re only going to use it to buy booze.” The panhandler said, “What? And you’re not?”

All human laughter conforms to a basic phonetic structure that consists of short, vowel-like notes, each lasting about one-15th of a second and are repeated every fifth of a second. Laugh faster or slower than that and it sounds more like panting than laughter. Deaf people laugh without hearing, and people on cellphones laugh without seeing. In addition to humans, apes (chimps, gorillas, orangutans) and, surprisingly, rats laugh, at least when tickled.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on the list.