Wild Dingo

I almost got kicked out of yoga class the other day. No, really. Like almost “by the ear” kicked out.

Before class, in the yoga parking lot, I ran into a friend (I won’t name names, but we’ll call her Stacy since that’s her name). We decided to get spots next to each other. The only few spots open were in the front row in the corner, so we took those spots.

Stacy’s hot. I mean, really hot–model hot. Perfect everything. She’s the kind of hot that makes most men foam at the mouth. What makes her hotness even worse is that she’s also a sharp wit with a clever sense of humor. She’s also a great yogi, strong and graceful and great to watch if you want to learn good alignment. We practice next to each other a lot and by now, we can look at each other, know what the other is thinking and have a quick laugh over the shared thought.

I don’t know what happened, but somehow in the first 15 minutes of class, she fell out of a very simple standing pose, like she was drunk or something. She snickered. I caught her gaze in the mirror and whispered, “Pipe down!” So she snickers some more. So I whisper, “Gitt ‘tout” in my best Ahnold voice. Then she loses it and can’t stop. Of course the virus is airborne so I start giggling, uncontrollably. For the next 20 minutes we stumbled through our asanas, as if inebriated from six or seven margaritas. We kept right on giggling, with our mouths closed (which makes trying to stop even worse) over absolutely NOTHING. It was that painful kind of giggle that stabbed me in the gut. AND I COULDN’T…FRICKIN’…STOP!

This isn’t the first time “stupid” laughter has happened to me and I’m sure it’s not uncommon for most people to have had happen a few times. But I seem to experience it more than most and in the most serious situations: at funerals, in hospitals, in corporate meetings or when someone is raging angry.

Let’s hope I’m never am held at gunpoint. I can just picture the mugger: “I’m f-in’ serious! Give me your damn money or I’m gonna shoot you! Stop laughing right now! I mean it! Stop it!” Bang, I’m dead and the mugger is $3.50 richer.

Anyway, usually, whenever I find I’m laughing inappropriately, I just excuse myself to retain some semblance of composure. But I couldn’t do that here. I ran through all the possible scenarios of trying to stop this preposterous behavior and quickly concluded leaving would absolutely be the worst thing to do because:

1. I’d have to weave my way through rows of angry yogis to the back door and feel them judge my ridiculous behavior.
2. Their stares would only make me laugh louder and I’d drown out the teacher.
3. I couldn’t trust my composure to walk casually and instead only saw myself stumbling into someone’s perfect dancer pose and knocking them over.
4. Leaving and then coming back to the mat next to Stacy would force me to look at her face and then it would start all over.

So I was stuck there. The entire time, fumbling through my poses like a drunken fool, trying not to look at her, not even once. Which is kind of hard to do in front of a mirror.

At this point, I’m laughing so hard, snot started to drool from my nose. And then it was time for handstand. Ah! The perfect pose to drain the snot back into my nose. I don’t know how I got up into handstand while giggling, but I was really happy to get the snot back into the nose.

We were in the corner of the room and doing our best to contain our sounds but I could feel every single person’s eyes burn us with contempt. All 60 pairs of them. Yoga is serious business and you better not frack with your neighbor’s meditation, let alone 60 yogi’s meditation. Every time we tried to stop, something would trigger a new round of giggles. I’d get to the point where I’d stop laughing and try to restart my ujjayi breath. Only I had been laughing so long, I had built up reserve of phlegm in the back of my nose and throat. So my ujjayi breath sounded like Darth Vader under water. And that made Stacy laugh even more. Which of course, made me laugh even more.

Eventually the class grew bored with us, since they weren’t in on the joke (even though there wasn’t one), and pretended we weren’t there. Like we were two wall flowers–drunk wall flowers–who couldn’t stop disturbing the class with girlish laughter. I kept expecting the yoga teacher coming over and grab each of us by the ear and toss us out the door. But that never happened. Instead we eventually managed to stop laughing after what seemed like an eternity. Still, I won’t be surprised if I find a sign on the wall with our head shots, instructing teachers to separate us in class.

I just hope this never happens to me while I’m teaching. Which means of course, it probably will.