The Magic of Malted Milk Maker

“Everyone should have a friend that they shouldn’t sit next to at a serious function,” said some meme-maker on Facebook. For my mother, that friend was my grandmother. Their bouts of laughter in awkward places were the stuff of legends. Churches, funerals, confessionals. It didn’t matter. When the spirit or magic struck, they just let loose and indulged.

You know the feeling. That uncontrollable laughter, stifled behind a pinched nose, then racing through the body, growing and growing, being chased by the shame of the stares and sneers around you, which suddenly make you laugh even more. It’s wonderful and it’s awful.

My mother and grandmother had the most trouble keeping a straight face in the face of good alliteration. Once, at a Weight Watchers meeting, the speaker was extolling the deliciousness of some new product: powdered “Malted Milk Maker.” How thick the Malted Milk Maker made the milk. How truly tasty and filling the Malted Milk Maker was. How everyone should try the powdered Malted Milk Maker! My mother says she froze, hands by her side, unable to look at my grandmother whose shoulders had begun to shake. The grunts and snorts followed, then the tears arrived as their otherwise strong will escaped their bodies. They had to excuse themselves and lock their laughter in the ladies’ room for five minutes.

Then, there was the infamous “blue butt board” being sold to them by an earnest, garden shop attendant. Despite never identifying the reason why anyone should ever own a blue butt board, I believe they bought it, nonetheless, just to keep their dignity intact. But the laughter could be heard from the car as they hurriedly escaped the parking lot.

I have had similar attacks but mine are often prompted by physical comedy or awkward accidents. I’m a sucker for those videos showing one gangly biking accident or skateboard collision or drinking mishap after another (as long as it’s clear that no one gets seriously hurt.)

On an early date with my husband, he leaned into my open car window to kiss me goodbye. It was quite romantic. On his exit, he banged his bald head on the inside of the door frame. I quickly waved goodbye and put the window up, just in time to obscure my howling. (I knew it hadn’t hurt his head as much as his pride.) He called me five minutes later asking if I was still laughing. I said I wasn’t as I wiped away the tears. I inherited that weird phenomenon from my grandmother, tears and howling laughter. They go hand in hand, somehow.  

These uncontrollable moments of inappropriate laughter are ones that we easily recognize and feel immediately—either from our memories or our connectedness in moments of humanity. They are silly but universal and still unique. Regardless of whether the universality is derived from a giddy or serious moment, we know them when they strike that chord inside us. We know that moment of empathy when we recognize ourselves in someone else’s situation, we can feel it.

Universal moments or truths are considered the heart of good fiction. Fiction is an exercise in empathy at its core. It is filled with moments that readers recognize or can relate to, even if not for the same ridiculous reasons or frequency as my mother and grandmother. Finding universal truths in writing is sometimes a challenge, but they are there, buried beneath years of lived experience and mounds of malted milk maker.