McKenna's Laughter Blog

In my last blog post for the semester, I wanted to address two of the common themes in humor regarding COVID-19: jokes about your kids and jokes about your significant who you're quarantining with. Although my mom doesn't have small children she has to entertain and homeschool while being stuck at home, she has been loving all of the memes and videos about moms who do (which she shows me throughout the day). Her favorite ones have been about "fire drills" where moms lock their kids out of their house and wonder how long they can pretend the drill is going on before they should let their kids back inside. I've seen criticism about humor along these lines because some people say it's not funny to talk about locking your kids out of your house or complaining about being stuck with them all day everyday. What I think? People need to laugh during this time otherwise we'd all go crazy, so why can't we all enjoy the jokes and know that's helping people g...

This semester I've learned a lot about laughing and humor. Here are the top 5 most relevant things I'd like to keep in my back pocket in case I need to use the knowledge again: 5. I should be really afraid of elevators. I'm not super claustrophobic, but from all the elevator pranks I watched, I'm going to be a little more weary of them from now on. 4. I would never, ever have wanted to live in Victorian England. Based on all of the videos we watched and the satirical elements of The Importance of Being Ernest , I've come to the conclusion I would not have survived living in Victorian England. The societal rules were (excuse my British) rubbish, and the things women did to be pretty literally sometimes killed them. Never will I ever look down upon women from Victorian England again, and I continue to thank my lucky stars I didn't have to live then. 3. Laughing was an evolutionary social skill. To be honest, I'm not sure I ever really thought about wh...

In filling out my survey for the Honors Laureate ceremony, I was asked to recount one of my fondest memories at TCU, and this lead me and my best friend, Olivia, down a spiral of fun memories we had together. For this post, I wanted to just put some of those in writing, because I'm becoming very sentimental about my looming graduation. Memory #1: Trying to learn the Fake ID line dance at 1:00 in the morning I was always an adamant Billy Bobs goer, but being from the Midwest means I didn't have previous knowledge of the common southern line dances. After my first few times Bobs experiences, I made it my mission to learn all of the ones they played every week, including the hardest one to Fake ID by Big & Rich. One Friday night, I recruited Olivia to try and learn it with me. We hooked up Olivia's computer to our sorority house's TV, and watched the tutorial video over and over and over again. We worked on it for about 2 hours before Olivia's roommate, Anna, ca...

Just recently I have rediscovered the joy of meditative adult coloring. I've had an adult coloring book since I needed to spend a Barnes and Noble gift card in high school, but I've used it very rarely. As we go further and further into quarantine, I've had to rediscover old hobbies and pastimes, so a few weekends ago I broke out the adult coloring book. It's a mandala coloring book (which is basically geometric shapes made into a circle that was invented in Hindu and Buddhist culture), and I'd have to say that it is as meditative as the front of the book says it will be. For each coloring page, I choose three colors and repeat the colors over and over again until I finish the page. The first one I did took me approximately 5 hours total, and I've done 4-5 since then. Being in quarantine, what's been hardest for me is having literally nothing else to think about besides COVID-19. It colors (pun intended) every one of my thoughts, since my entire life would ...

Although it's a little late, here are my reactions to the favorite cartoon character activity. My definite favorite part about the activity was getting to know everyone in class a little better. Having class via Zoom makes it a lot harder to form those friendships that being in physical class makes possible. I miss turning to the person next to me to say a funny remark or being able to look around the class and see the stickers on people's water bottles. This activity was a fun way to continue the relationships we'd started forming in the first few months of class even without being in SCHAR 2001 (which I think was our classroom). Someone's favorite cartoon character says a lot about a person, and it was really fun hearing what everyone's response was. How, you ask, does someone's favorite cartoon character say a lot about them? I'll use the example of myself. My favorite cartoon character is Cinderella because I don't watch many cartoons, but I love t...

I love reading. Always have and (hopefully) always will. It was always my primary form of entertainment, and this past week I've rediscovered just how much I love it. My boyfriend got me a Book of the Month subscription for my birthday in November, and when my April book came last weekend, called The Library of Legends by Janie Chang, I basically couldn't put it down. I read it as much as I could until I finished it on Thursday. While at my lake house this weekend (where my main activity is always reading on our super comfy couch), I started and almost finished another book - Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. These two books rekindled my love for reading (that I'd really lost only briefly since my March Book of the Month), and now I'm here to tell you why I think reading is SO MUCH better than watching movies. 1. Reading lasts WAY longer I get sad when a movie I love finishes just an hour or two after I've started watching it, but I can nurse a good book for a ...

While this spring semester hasn't turned out to be exactly what I thought, I do agree that laughter is the best medicine. I've been trying really hard to find humor in everyday, and here's my top 5 tips on finding humor amidst a world turned upside down. 5. Play pranks on your family. (Remember, though, that they're the only people you can talk to until at least April 30th, so plan accordingly) 4. Try and write your own stand-up routine. (I guarantee even if it's terrible, you'll laugh trying) 3. Look at your favorite comedic YouTuber or Tik Toker. 2. Zoom your friends for a happy hour or a game night. (I've heard Pictionary is a great Zoom game) 1. If worst comes to worst, just buy your favorite comedy movie on iTunes and you'll be able to watch it whenever and wherever you want. (My personal favorite is She's the Man) I know that some days, for me, it's hard to laugh, but it really does wonders to lift sad spirits. I hope everyone o...

While loosely following the rules of social distancing, my family has been spending every weekend in quarantine at our lake house with one or two other people we invite for a nice, wifi-free weekend away. Last weekend we invited by best friend Kyla and her mom to come for a rainy weekend of eating, drinking, and board games. My mom had just bought a new board game called "New Phone, Who Dis?"from the same creators as "What Do You Meme" if you've played that popular game. "New Phone, Who Dis?" follows the same rules as "Apples to Apples" (where a category card is played and everyone submits one of their cards as a response, and a judge picks the winner of the best response), except it's supposed to be like a texting conversation. The judge picks an "Inbox" card and each participant picks their best "Reply" card. To really set the stage for the game, each card is designed like an iMessage conversation on an iPhone, but t...