Laugh 'Til Liquid Leaks From You

The following is in response to the instructions by JillJillBoBill to recall and share an occurrence in my life that incited uncontrollable laughter to the point of tears and/or peeing the pants:

It was May of 2004. I was on the job, shooting a highlights video for one of our clients whose annual sales meeting that particular year happened to take place on a HollandAmerica cruise ship in the Caribbean. A chartered cruise ship, no less! The only people on the ship were HollandAmerica crew, the client's people (about 600), and the four of us on the video crew.

Despite the low number of people on the ship – the passenger count was half the ship's capacity – we still had designated dinner seatings, and the crew person who organizes such things seemed to think that, after working together all day, the guys making the video would want to spend even more time together by sitting together for dinner.

So there we were, the four of us: Mr. Graceful, our boss; Stud-boy, our editor; The King of Comedy, our producer; and I. We had finished dinner and were waiting for dessert and the floor-show, which we were told was not to be missed. A waiter brought a small plate with four small cookies on it.

The King of Comedy – if you can't tell by my nickname for him – is an attention whore who thinks every word he utters is pure Comedy Gold. Don't get the wrong idea…he can be clever, he is often pretty funny, but rarely is he original, and turn it off once in a while! And though he has good common sense, has great organizational skills and seems savvy about politics and dealing with people, he's a geographical moron who is prone to utter malapropisms due to his shallow vocabulary, and so often comes across as kind of dumb. Anyway, the King of Comedy looks down at the small plate of cookies and he says, "Oh! It's…" He points at the cookies and then looks at us. "They're…" He's stuck for a word. He gestures with one hand in an effort to encourage one of us to read his mind.

"Cookies?" I say.

"No!" he says, still gesturing.

"Dessert," says Mr. Graceful.

King of Comedy closes his eyes and shakes his head in frustration. "You know. They're… they're…" More gesturing follows.

"What?" says one of us in mild exasperation. This has already gone on too long. I'm anticipating another wisecrack, but his own dysfunctional vocabulary is delaying his punchline.

"You know!" He starts pointing violently at the cookies.

"No, we don't!" I yell back.

Finally King of Comedy gives up, slaps the table and, in frustration, asks, "What's in a meringue pie?"

In unplanned unison, Mr. Graceful, Stud-boy and I, each of us thinking we're being funny, say, "Meringue?"

Suddenly a stunned, sheepish look comes across King of Comedy's face, along with a quickly spreading pink tint. Just as suddenly, I realize that he was not trying to make a joke, and that "meringue" was indeed the word he was trying to come up with.

In the same instant I realized it, Mr. Graceful and Stud-boy figure it out, too, and we start laughing hysterically. A few moments later, King of Comedy is also laughing, and none of us can stop. We can't even pause long enough to tell the waiter we want coffee.

We must have laughed non-stop for a full half-hour. The next day Stud-boy placed a videotape adhesive label above the screen of his video monitor and wrote on it, "What's in a meringue pie?" When the rest of us saw it, we were laughing yet again, for almost as long. It became the catch phrase for the rest of the trip, and King of Comedy has not been able – or allowed – to live it down.

Oh, and the floor-show? It was worth missing.