The Laughing Man

This is not a post about life or Egypt or adventure.  It contains no profound insights or descriptive eloquence.  It is simply something about which I feel I must tell my community and the world.  For a month and a half I have been trying to decide if this is worth writing about.  I have finally decided that, small and simple a subject as it is, to not mention the Laughing Man would somewhere deprive all of you of an honest and thorough peak into my life in Cairo.  Here is how simple it is.

There is a student in my Public Finance class who can not stop laughing.  On the first day of class the teacher, a comical Chilean man named Rodrigo Seda, entered room 322SS, saw Laughing Man with his preened chinstrap slouching in his seat listing to his ipod while staring cockeyed at the blackboard as he gently flexed and unflexed his biceps absentmindedly, gave a shudder and said in a warning tone, “I remember you.”  Than he turned to a girl a couple seats away and finished the comment. “He thinks everything is funny.” To which Laughing Man started laughing.

For the first few classes I thought Laughing Man was just trying to be a disruptive wise ass.  But, it turns out he really can’t control it.  Rodrigo once threatened to fail him on the spot if he didn’t stop laughing.  This worked… for 5 minutes, and then he burst out laughing again.  During one class Laughing Man had to be sent out of the room to go on a walk and cool down.  On other occasions he has been made to sit in the corner facing the wall so that he won’t see anything funny.  Naturally, he finds this situation very amusing.

Rodrigo can say something as simple as, “So, Ahmed and Fatima have a given amount of clothing and food to divide between them,” or “As we move along the PPF,” and Laughing man will be ignited.  And, as poetic justice dictates, his laugh is infectious.

Laughing man is about 5’6” and good looking, the antithesis of threatening, and yet timid students are still afraid to sit next to him.  It will be interesting to see who he manages at our first exam.