I had a t-shirt with a picture of the young smiling Elvis. Under the image of his face were the words “I’m Dead.” It made people laugh. Strangers, mostly. Or so it seemed. I may have missed the sustained and guttural chortling and guffaws from the mouth of strangers who surrounded me for the years I wore that shirt. I became immune to the lungs being coughed up and the engulfing miasma of nasal hilarity sprawling from the nostrils of those with whom I spent the most time. It could be the shirt was so funny that I had no real friends on account of it, exhausted as they were in perpetual body-shaking laughter.
Or it could just be that the laughter of strangers rings more electrically and alive than that of people I knew and from whom I expected it. The laughter of strangers is like the endlessly beautiful if ultimately nagging churchbells that will not stop with their DING DONG tintinnabulations of religious carols and Christmas tunes. It is beautiful, but can it please stop?
A big-breasted woman outside Penn Station saw the “I’m Dead” shirt. She stopped in her tracks and just laughed, laughed, laughed. A 20-something man with some friends saw the shirt and pointed across the sidewalk, laughing and yelling “Nice one!” From the 4th level of a 6-level tour bus in midtown came showers of laughter from dozens of tourists. That waves of laughter started after one person saw my shirt, started pulling on the arm of someone sitting next to her, who in turn got the attentions of others on the bus. Heads turned, in less than a second more heads turned, then more heads heads heads. All at once the heads busted into laughter. At the White House President Clinton and Madeline Albright were surfing the Internet, looking at live webcams, when I passed by a camera at 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue. Clinton saw my shirt and spontaneously laughed so hard that the Big Mac he was eating flew from his face, completely messing up his Oval Office desk. Ms. Albright was unimpressed by my shirt but let the President have his fun with it. I heard rumor that Joe Frank wrote a radio show that night. Opening words for this program were said to be “I’m Dead” but apparently he never finished that script, nor was it made known to me how he saw my shirt.
I used to make strangers laugh, until I lost my Elvis shirt.
Strangers Laugh
