Choosing Your Friends on April Fool's Day: Remember to Laugh

​April Fool’s Day is a goofy holiday for most people.  But my Mom loved April Fool’s Day so much, she’d plan ahead for it. 

​• One year she baked oatmeal cookies with 10-in pieces of string in them and put them on a nice "Help Yourself" platter in the lunchroom where she was a secretary.  Dental floss cookies.  April Fools!  
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• Another year she turned a cake pan upside down and frosted it with thick chocolate frosting and piped "April Fool's" on it with white frosting. She then put paper plates and a knife next to it with a sign that said, “Help yourself.” Each person who came into the lunch room would greedily saw away on it until the sound of metal on metal led them to take a closer look at Iron Cake.  April Fools!

At dinner that night, she’d love to tell us about who laughed hardest at her April Fool’s joke that day.  The people she mentioned weren't always the the funniest or most gregarious people in the office; they were often the quietest.  What came to be oddly predictable was that the same people who laughed the most were also the ones she felt friendlier toward, and they were the ones she seemed to repeatedly bring up in other conversations on the other 364 days of the year. 
 
One of the best quotes about friendship is also one of the best quotes about laughter:  “We choose our friends not because they make us laugh but because we make them laugh.”  The most fun person to be around isn’t the funniest person in the room, but it’s the person who believes you are the funniest person in the room.  
 
It seems less cool to laugh than it used to be.  In social media, LOL stands for Laugh Out Loud  (I’m hip to these acronym things, just like I know WTF stands for Way Too Funny).  
 
What I often see happen – especially with my daughters’ friends – is that instead of laughing during a conversation, someone who's not even smiling will actually say “LOL."  It’s weird.  It’s sort of like having someone compliment you on your sweater or haircut without looking at it.  It' robotic. 
 
On April’s Fools Day my wife and I were having lunch at Panera.  At the table next to us, a senior manager was meeting with three employees who worked remotely for the company.  He clearly knew all of them, but not very well.  They were all earnest, and they asked good questions and seemed prepared.  But one of them stood out -- even to me at 10 feet away -- because she genuinely chuckled and laughed very easily.  Not leg-slapping guffaws, but just happy chuckles at what either the manager said, or what the others said, or what she said.  As their meeting progressed, more and more of the manager’s general comments and advice came to be directed to this woman instead of 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 to each of them.  I don’t know if she was the most productive, smartest, interesting of the three employees, but she was the one who stood out.
 
Who do you like most in your groups -- who makes it most worth sticking around?  Over the years I’ve played saxophone in several rock bands, and my favorite people in those bands weren’t the greatest musicians – they were the ones who laughed the most during rehearsals or shows.  I’m in a men’s group, and the two or three guys who make it most compelling to return to each week aren’t the ones who are necessarily the most insightful or most successful, they are the ones who laugh the easiest.  My favorite colleagues, students, and post-docs have also been the ones who laughed the most.  My Mom’s genetics speaking.
 
I don’t know if that chuckling Panera woman was the best of those three employees, or if the people who laughed at my Mom’s goofy April Fools jokes were the best in the office.  They are, however, the ones who are the most memorable.
 
Sometimes people say, “To find a friend you need to close one eye.  To keep them you must close both.”  If your eyes are closed, you’ll still be able to find them if they are laughing. 
 
Happy April 2nd.

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