Nutsibooism

It is the use of laughter as medicine. It is the theory that in order to keep your sanity, sometimes it becomes necessary to go insane. It is the absence of worry and the presence of fun. It is love for life. It is the practice of laughing until your sides hurt and tears start coming from your eyes. It is silliness. It is randomness. It is something like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” but easier and just as fun to say. 

The word is: “nutsibooism.”

Go ahead, say it out loud: nut-see-boo-iz-em.

My late Great Aunt Lettie invented the word. Now, everyone has their little quirks and eccentricities, but Aunt Lettie was quite a character. She used to go outside and water her plastic flowers so that the neighbors would think they were real. She also used to make up silly songs for me and my younger brother when we were little kids to keep us entertained. One of them was titled and made up of just two words that made us giggle no matter how many times we sang it: “Boody-boo.”

When Aunt Lettie was around, there was always laughter. She is most remembered by those who knew her for three things, the first being her sense of humor. 

The second is the way she prayed. In her church, Aunt Lettie was known as a “prayer warrior.” Even a simple trip to the grocery store with her would reveal this to be true. When we arrived at her house to pick her up, she would insist on praying before starting the trip. Then when we got to the store, she would pray before we got out of the car. Then again before we left, and again when we arrived back at her house. And whenever she lost something—her glasses, wallet, house keys, or whatever—she would pray and search and keep praying until she recovered the item. Aunt Lettie left God out of nothing.

The third thing was her generosity. She was always giving to others, never seeming to worry about whether she had enough for herself. She seemed to find a joy in it.

And like I said before, she also loved to joke around and make people smile. She had a gift for lifting people’s spirits, and she would use that gift no matter where she was or who she was with.

I think that’s why she made up nutsibooism: to make people laugh, lift their spirits. I can’t remember what her exact definition for the word was, but it was something along the lines of laughing and being crazy and having fun simply for the sake of laughing and being crazy and having fun. 

Every once in a while something will make me think of nutsibooism and I’ll laugh out loud. It crossed my mind last semester at school when some friends and I decided to have a campfire and roast marshmallows. We had the bag of marshmallows, we had the sticks, and we even had the fire—sort of. 

We couldn’t actually set anything on fire on campus without most likely getting arrested or something, so we used the next best thing to a real campfire: an iPod app with flames and crackling fire noises. We also had a backpack with flames on it, so we put that on the floor with the iPod on top of it and sat in a circle “roasting” our marshmallows. 

Sure, we got a few strange looks here and there, but we had fun and laughed and ate marshmallows and after ten minutes, we all broke up and went to our different classes.

What crazy things do you do or have you done for the sake of having fun and laughing? If you want, share your stories as comments below, and if you don’t have any, go out and make some!

After all, everyone needs some nutsibooism in their lfie.