"... I guess you had to be there".

Isn't that possibly one of the most annoying phrases someone can say to you? Especially when it follows their lengthy attempts to relay some "absolutely hilarious, honestly" event, which you can't hear through their uncontrolled giggles and what you can hear just makes you think 'seriously? THIS is what you're hysterical over?' But you stand there quietly, trying to look amused whilst expending all your energy in willing the side of your lip not to curl in disdain and persuading your raised eyebrow to resume normal position. After all, you can totally see the reason why this tale is so side-splittingly, belly-achingly hilarious. Right?

Unfortunately, as much as I hate this phrase, this is exactly what I was guilty of last night. It was dark, nearly midnight; the boyfriend has almost drifted off to sleep... and he's suddenly aware that the bed is shaking.

He rolls over. "(April)? WTF are you laughing at?"
He knows me too well. I can laugh pretty much silently - upto a point - but the tears and trembling will give me away every time.
So, for fifteen agonizing minutes, I tried to form sentences - words, even - through my stutters and explosions of laughter... and failed miserably. Boyfriend politely tried to find the funny parts in my story, although he had to give them up after a while and tell me to just shut up. Which I couldn't. There is something about knowing you shouldn't be laughing which just makes you laugh harder.

I eventually managed to splutter "I guess you had to be there" and left him to sleep in peace.




What was I actually thinking about?
Well, we had this TERRIBLE lecture yesterday. Really, really awful. He spent ten minutes searching for a 'safety tested' sticker on the bottom of a fire extinguisher, which fifteen minutes earlier he had told us was capable of burning off eight layers of skin! In the next sentence, it was capable of burning through TEN layers of skin! And so on.

... Do we even have ten layers of skin?


Anyway, I digress. Which was exactly what this poor chap did. For a whole hour. He knew he'd lost us, but did he brush himself off, change tactic and try to recover the lecture? No, he continued talking about fire extinguishers and sticky safety labels and did his best to ignore the 120 quivering shoulders and stifled snorts. My friends and I hid our heads on the desks initially - we couldn't look at each other - but our violent shaking just caused our pens to create a huge rattling noise against the desks. By the time he'd moved the discussions onto the correct positioning of fire blankets, we were weeping openly.

What did this have to do with teaching? I have NO idea. But I know you're not finding it that funny, whereas I'm still laughing away over the mere picture of the fire extinguisher.