Laughter as Medicine by Carla
This past week, resident advisors in my hall put on a karaoke night. I had not been to one before. Being honest, I don’t sing, so karaoke is something I artfully avoid. However, it fell on a Thursday night, and my typical Thursday night routine is limited to laundry and reviewing. With nothing to lose, I sold a few friends on the idea and hit the lounge to watch Harshman residents sing karaoke.
There’s an expression that goes that laughter is the best medicine. This doesn’t hold much weight if you’re sick with the flu, but here, it’s acceptable. Coursework and everything else about college can be stressful, and laughter goes a long way to fight stress. I can’t speak for other halls, but my residence hall knows how to put on events. This one was side-splitting. Videos are still floating around Facebook. It unfolded in the “blue room”—the appropriately nicknamed lounge whose walls are every conceivable shade of blue—where the punch and chips were free and the turn-out was impressive.
I was not quite crazy enough to step up to the karaoke machine and butcher good music. As I see it, I was protecting the audience’s ears. Fortunately, a lot of residents are talented singers, and even those who weren’t had an excellent time. Performances ranged from the Spice Girls to Cyndi Lauper. The music selection spanned across of lot of genres and won a lot of laughs. Nothing was as entertaining, however, as when a couple fearless male friends of ours sang “The Bad Touch,” drawing up fierce laughter and some classic facial expressions.
I am all for mixing up the occasional evening with free food and good fun. I appreciate the creative ideas my hall comes up with. I concur: laughter is good medicine. On a last note, when my last Friday class ended the next evening, my roommate and I went up to Perrysburg to buy groceries. While we were there, I grabbed a cookie cake from a Giant Eagle bakery and had it personalized to read “TGIF, HCD!” This was a little gift for the comedic staff of Harshman Chapman Dunbar. This was greeted with some pretty happy expressions. It turns out that cookie cakes are cure-alls, too.