A cute video of a baby laughing its head off has been doing the rounds on Twitter this week. He is sitting in a cardboard box as it’s dragged along by the family dog. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa) may frown at such a caper, but their concerns wouldn’t bother this bairn, for the lad’s quite helpless with mirth. Naturally, his joy is infectious.
When I was not much older than a baby, I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin. In the live recording of Stairway to Heaven at Madison Square Garden in 1973, Robert Plant follows up the lyric about forests echoing with laughter with a question for the crowd: “Does anyone remember laughter?” he enquires plaintively. Even as a devotee of his work, I remember thinking this plea a bit on the dismal side. But now, looking at the delight of the baby in the box, I find myself asking a similar question: does anyone remember laughing like that? You know, laughing and fearing you may never stop laughing, laughing so hard it hurts, laughing so uncontrollably that you’re crying, actually crying. It does still happen, of course, but less often. Or perhaps that’s just me.
