Inappropriate Laugher

There's a fellow student this morning in my Computer Lab class at the ECCC (East County Career Center) who is laughing inappropriately on a continuing basis.

The lab has four hexagonal work tables, each set against a wall, leaving room for 5 computer stations. The "Inappropriate Laugher" is sitting two positions from me so that I can hear her, and in my line of sight so that I can also see her convulsions and body movements.

She is doing a typing tutorial, and every few minutes she'll remove her sunglasses, rub her eyes, stare at the screen, smile, then convulse with an audible chuckle. Sometimes she'll hold her hands palms up and do the "let's raise the roof" gesture popular in the late 1990's at night clubs. Her laughter is not really "out loud", but it's a very audible chuckle, as if unsuccessfully stifled. Once in a while she'll bend her head down to the keyboard as if experiencing a "belly laugh".

My first thought was that she's as high as a kite.

It's very distracting and disrupting. I tried playing the sample music on this PC through my headphones to drown her out. Every 10 minutes or so, she gets up and goes outside into the hallway for a few minutes. Because she's totally captured my attention away from my Excel 2007 tutorial, I followed her outside a little while ago.

She was out in the hall sitting on the floor, putting on some hand sanitizer. I said "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said.

"You're laughing a lot!" I tried to smile.

"Oh, I'm laughing at something personal. Do you need a part time job? The Salvation Army is hiring bell ringers..."

She went on to explain the position a bit more, and then I smiled and thanked her while backing up, and then I re-entered the Computer Lab.

She came back in and continued as before. On her next trip out of the lab, I called over one of the instructors, and asked her if she was familiar with the student who was sitting there (I pointed to her empty station). "She keeps on laughing".

After pausing briefly, the instructor answered, "I'm not sure what's going on with her. I don't have enough medical knowledge to make a diagnosis. We have to find a balance between her right to be here and... " She sort of trailed off.

The new student right next to me, a gray-haired woman of about 55, suggested "She might have Tourette syndrome".

The instructor continued, "As long as she's not abusive".

"That's reasonable," I replied, as I noticed the Inappropriate Laugher coming back into the classroom.

Well, my goal of just whizzing through the Excel 2007 tutorial has been shot to pieces. However, I think I'm learning something even more interesting.

Before going out in the hallway to speak to Inappropriate Laugher, I had pretty much judged her as being high on drugs. Then later when the student suggested Tourette syndrome, that opened a new possibility. Looking back, when the I.L. was explaining the Bell Ringer position to me, she was very lucid, very serious. As if she was suddenly "no longer high".

So using this scene as an excuse to break Computer Lab rules about using the internet for non-tutorial reasons, I googled "symptom: inapproriate laughter" and found this link:

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/sym/laughter.htm

Possible reasons for laughter as a symptom:

Angelman syndrome - Laughter
Dementia
Drug intoxication
Multi-Infarct Dementia - laughing inappropriately
Normal happy personality - of course, laughter need not be inappropriate.
Social anxiety - may be "nervous laughter"
Substance abuse
Tic disorders
Tourette syndrome - inappropriate outbursts

Now that I've had a brief education, and noticed how nice the instructors are to I.L. and how they seem to know her well, I think she'll be less distracting to me.

Historically I'm very easily distracted, by kids making noises at meetings, by chair kickers at movie theaters, and by people on public transportation listening to music on headphones, with the tinny beat audible to those around them.

Lately though, I've become more tolerant. At the Assembly this weekend, Wendy was infuriated by a sister sitting directly behind her with constant throat-clearing. I mean constant... every 15 seconds or so. Funny thing was is that I did not hear it! Totally tuned out to it. Wendy had to describe it to me afterward.

This is good... being judgmental is one of my many faults. I misjudged this woman. Or not... maybe she is as high a kite.