Laughing

     I don't always laugh easily.  At one point I saw this as evidence of my "discerning" sense of humor.  I'm pulling an image, from my pathetically small reserve of childhood memories, of myself in a dance class (me in a dance class is the only funny part of this story because I was as stiff as Pinocchio).
     Anyway, I was sitting there with my classmates and the teacher said something to us by way of helping us improve... "If you do it this way, you look like elephants..." and she did some sort of exaggerated voice and body gestures to emphasize her points.  Who knows?  Anyway, the other girls laughed, and I remember thinking, "It wasn't funny.Why are they laughing? "
     Now, I don't want to take this point farther than it could possibly go in terms of proving anything about my nature.  Still, what I'm saying is that for DECADES (and after finding that I didn't laugh in other moments or as much as others) - for decades I took this as proof of some intellectual superiority.  But now, I begin to wonder if instead it's a sign that I was missing something.
     Maybe I've always been out of the loop in terms of human connections.  Others laugh not because they don't know that something isn't funny in any objective sense. Could it be that people are laughing because they are participating in a moment of group bonding that I don't get? 
    Just the other day in the NYT there was a cool article about imitation among conversation partners: how we unconsciously imitate those we spend time with or even those we simply talk to.  They did experiments, and apparently "normal" people feel unsettled after a conversation in which their partner does NOT mimic them in some ways. (I can't think of the exact day this article appeared - but I hope I run across it again so I can include a link here.)
     I'm in awe of how many kinds of social connections are taking place on levels way beyond conscious thinking.  Or ARE they? ... (way beyond conscious thinking, that is).   Are there people out there who understand all of this and use it fluently every day like a language which they speak concurrently with English or French or Russian?
--artificial stopping point imposed because I have work to do -- still this is worth some thought.