Two days ago, I went to an amusement park with four friends, all on the spectrum. We had all brought different things with us, for a variety of reasons: I had brought an easily-recognizable tote bag, with a few stim toys in it that I had somehow not removed. We were in line for one ride, when someone asked about another nearby attraction, and I explained that it was like the old "scrambler" that had little seats and that spun people around two ways at the same time, but with an additional feature that it was held in a dark room, with a strobe light- "like this", I said- and took out a ball that strobed when squeezed- and one of my friends began to laugh a lot. It was contageous, and soon I was laughing hard, too. In the middle of this, he asked why it was funny, and went back to laughing. That was even funnier! Sharing made it even better.
Do we laugh "inappropriately", as many of us have been "observed" to have done at formal evaluations or other places where we are under professional observation, or do we simply realize that something is funny where NTs cannot get the joke? I have often felt so lonely, when they could not share my laughter with me. Maybe, they have felt lonely when I did not get their humor, too.
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