This week I read something which made me laugh out loud. On
FaceBook was a quote from C. S. Lewis about politics, along with the reference.
In the comments was something like, “He never wrote this. Check out (this
Internet source) for what he actually wrote.”
What I found amusing was, why not send people to the original
source? Pointing people to a secondary source certainly isn’t as accurate as
reading it as it was originally printed, you know, like in that thing called a
book. The quote was allegedly from The Screwtape Letters—a hysterical book on
its own.
To me, sending people to a secondary source reminded me of the
old game of Telephone, where kids sit in a circle. One person whispers a phrase
in the next person’s ear. They keep whispering the phrase around the circle. The
outcome is usually nothing like the original, and everyone falls over laughing.
Why do the children burst into laughter? Because even if they didn’t know the
original phrase or sentence, they know the words spoken out loud by the end of
the circle could not have been anything like what the starter had said.
Would that we were as wise as children. And doesn’t this
make you want to sit down with friends and play a whispering game ending in
laughter?
Writers, as much as you can, instead of clicking for
information on Google, please check out the original sources. Also, go find
things to laugh about.
I unashamedly admit I checked online for research of the
research for children laughing an average of three hundred times a day while
adults laugh an average of 10 to find two interesting facts. 1) “Both adults
and children laugh primarily during social interactions with others.”1
So, go interact. And, 2) the 300 times a
day for children vs 10 for adults is an urban myth, although that may have come
after a game of Telephone.
Lewis, C. S., The
Screwtape Letters, HarperSanFrancisco, 1942
1 https://www.aath.org/do-children-laugh-much-more-often-than-adults-do
