Friday, June 17, 2011

Laughing out Loud

Leslie was laughing quite unselfconsciously, head tilted back, tears streaming from her eyes. She was sitting in the middle of a large lecture hall. Most of the other students turned to see what the commotion was, the looks on their faces ranged from startled to curious to slightly pissed off. The ones who were curious had a right to be, not a joke had been uttered, certainly not by the professor who was famous for not diverging one iota from the subject material. The last thing he had said was an explanation of reverse osmosis; interesting? well at times, but hilarious? not by any means. The people closest to her shrugged at the rest of the class, they held no clue as to the joke anymore than the rest of the auditorium.

After several moments Leslie calmed down, regained her composure by removing her glasses and wiping her eyes. She then returned the spectacles to her face, picked up her mechanical pencil and scribbled down the last thing the professor had said about reverse osmosis before she had started laughing. The rest of the class was was thoroughly bemused, collectively shaking their heads in bewilderment. They too set back to taking notes.

No one noticed the smile that was still playing across Leslie's lips. Nor for that matter did anyone notice the tiny leprechaun who was still doing cartwheels on top of the overhead projector.

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