Laughing

«My girlfriend died laughing at one of my funny faces. Here friends were kind, and told me I shouldn't feel guilty; that she would have wanted to have died that way. They weren't there as her musical laughter turned to chokes, grunts and her death rattle. When I stopped grieving I found a beautiful new girl to love. She died laughing at a joke I made about her feet. The next one passed away similarly. My last girlfriend didn't die. She left me. She said we never had any fun together, that she wanted a man with a sense of humour.» (Dan Rhodes, 2000, Anthropology and a hundred other stories, pp. 85-86, Canongate.)