On the Planet of the Jesters

Somewhere in a remote galaxy, on the planet of the red jesters, in the colorful and picturesque city of Gibberia, where everybody speaks fluent gibberish, there were many strict laws that no one dared defy, unless he was ready to receive ten to a hundred whacks as a punishment.

The most important gibberian law had been enacted by Great Ridiculous himself, the city founder, and could be summarized in the following phrase:

Laugh at all costs!

That doesn’t sound so bad, will think many of you. After all, is there anything healthier than laughter? But, if you think carefully, you will soon find that things aren’t as harmless as they may seem at first glance. “Laugh at all costs” means you have to laugh even when you are not in the mood to do so, when you are sad or something awful has happened to you or to your friend or to your neighbor and certainly everybody can see that is not so nice.

Now some of you will think that great Ridiculous, who had come up with this law, must not have been right in the head, but then what successful jester is completely sane? None whatsoever. People don’t call them fools for nothing.

As if having to laugh all the time wasn’t enough, there was something even worse, something absolutely dreadful you had to endure if you wanted to continue living in Gibberia: crying was forbidden on pain of death. Even baby jesters weren’t allowed to cry and so, if they needed to be changed or fed, they had to giggle and they giggled in such an annoying nerve racking way that their parents ran as fast as they could to satisfy their every need, great or small.

In Gibberia there lived the hero of this tale, a jester who answered to the name of Giggles Ticklefoot. Giggles found it extremely hard to comply with gibberian laws and for that reason he had been punished numerous times with hundreds of whacks with the cane. He hadn’t received them all at once of course, but still it was not a pleasant business. Giggles never laughed as much as the authorities would find adequate, when a flower pot dropped on someone’s head, when someone fell down or generally when something unpleasant happened to another jester.

It’s no wonder that the most popular shops in Gibberia where those that sold pranks and all kinds of materials for practical jokes: chairs with nearly sawed off legs, so that whoever attempted to sit on them would fall clumsily down, candies and treats tasting like red hot chili pepper, exploding cigars, books titled ’A hundred fun ways to make someone trip’ and other similarly ill tasted jokes. Such tricks were extremely popular in Gibberia and jesters used to buy cartloads of them to mess with their friends and laugh their hearts out.

A store such as this was owned by Giggles’s best friend Beansprout Eggpeeler. He always advised him to laugh all the time. Idiotic laughter, he used to say, is a matter of practice. The more one laughs without serious reason, the easier it becomes to laugh at each silly little thing and spare oneself unneeded beating with the cane.

Giggles did his best to follow his friend’s advice. He tried to giggle foolishly, even when nothing even remotely funny occurred, but such a thing proved impossible. The funny thing was that it was easier for Giggles to laugh when something bad happened to him, than it was when it happened to someone else. One of the rare moments he could laugh for real was when others pulled a prank on him and he fell for it. For that reason he sought to become an easy target for all sorts of tricks and jokes. Though laughing wasn’t as easy for Giggles as it was for other jesters, he had never reached the other extreme, I mean crying.

Crying was an unforgivable act of defiance that led to certain death. In fact, even when a jester was beaten with a stick, he was forced to laugh and that naturally made the punishment even more inhumane. It’s to be expected that, when something so natural is so strictly forbidden, one has a constant desire to do it, but since no one was eager to be punished in the severe way dictated by this cruel law, they suppressed this completely natural urge to cry and indulged in all sorts of sadistic pranks and practical jokes targeted at their fellow jesters.

Giggles would probably do the same, but unfortunately for him he had a gentle character, well disposed towards others, completely out of place in this harsh, unfriendly environment. So Giggles craved a good cleansing cry and I don’t mean a light drizzle of a cry, I mean a cataclysmic cry, full of sobs and a waterfall of tears. All this years of suppression had made him almost incapable of crying, as if the muscles of his very soul had atrophied. That’s not particularly strange, if one considers that, since he was only a defenseless baby he had had to giggle, chuckle and laugh when he needed something, instead of crying like those lucky earth children.

One day not different in any way than the others Giggles woke up by the characteristic shrieky voice of his landlady, Mrs. Jokerin Happyprankster.

’Ticklefoot, wakey-wakey, he he he, it’s already eight o’ clock; come down - why don’t you? - and taste your yummy breakfast!’

Giggles opened his right eye, only to close it again right away. He was in no hurry to get up and that is quite normal, since life in Gibberia was such a nightmare. Anyway, in a few moments he opened his eyes for good and, still bleary, yawned and stretched; then he went over to the door to open it.

’Be good now! Don’t forget to wash your face!’

’Why doesn’t she mind her own business?’ said Giggles annoyed.

But, as he reached for the doorknob to open the door, a bucket full of cold water fell on his head from the top of the door covering him completely with its ice cold content. Mrs. Happyprankster had come during the night and had placed the bucket in such a way that her tenant would enjoy a refreshing shower gibberian style, when opening the door in the morning.

Hearing the cry Jokerin laughed her heart out.

’Now wasn’t that refreshing?’ she screamed ecstatic. ‘I warned you that you should wash your face, didn’t I? Cleanliness is a virtue of kings.’

Few things are so unpleasant as such an unwanted shower so early in the morning and that’s even more so, when one is barely awake, but Giggles, whether he liked it or not, was obliged by law to laugh about that nasty prank and mean it.

Indeed the poor jester laughed and he kept on laughing, as he opened the door and crossed the hallway to reach the stair. But, when his foot touched the first step, he slipped, lost his balance and, after bumping on each and every step he met on his way down, he finally landed painfully on the lower floor on his bottom. Mrs. Jokerin had spread butter on the top step to ensure that her beloved Giggles would start his day properly. Our hero bruised and aching all over got up and still giggling he went into the kitchen.

’On my soul, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in all my life. If I’d known you were in such a hurry to taste your breakfast, I would have brought it to you in bed,’ said wickedly the shriveled old hag.

’Ha, ha, ha, what a piquant sense of humor! How on earth did you think of something so...so amusing, Mrs. Happyprankster? You’ve really outdone yourself,’ said the unfortunate jester with his hand still on his aching rear end.

’Oh, come now! Sit on this here chair to catch your breath! You need it after such a fall,’ said the horrible woman.

The unsuspecting jester sat on the chair suggested to him by his landlady and of course fell right off; the leg of the chair had been sawed nearly off, so as to break when the thin jester attempted to sit on it.

New obscene giggles from the landlady, new forced chuckles from Giggles.

’Mrs. Happyprankster, you are priceless!’ said the unhappy jester trying hard to laugh idiotically, as the law enforced by the great Ridiculous dictated. ‘What a fine sense of humor!’

’I wish I could say the same about your heavy bottom,’ said the woman. ‘So long, my comfy little chair! I can’t stand it; I think I’ve peed myself.’

Giggles sat on another chair and Mrs. Happyprankster served the omelet that of course she had seasoned with plenty of red pepper.

But enough of the ill tasted pranks of this foolish woman! Suffice it to say that, when finally Giggles got out of the house to start his day, he was feeling miserable, unhappy, banged up and generally simply pitiful but, no matter how much he wanted to protest, to cry, to scream, he simply couldn’t do it. He had to laugh, always laugh. To avoid other unpleasant occurrences, he decided to leave the city and to find solace in the one place where no one could find him.