Pith Helmet

Most of my Dragon magazines disappeared over the years. Some due to poor storage, some to thievery, and some due to parental zealotry. I managed to preserve most of my favorite stuff thanks to the photocopy machine at the local library. I’ve got most of the Deities & Demigods of The World of Greyhawk. I’ve got a few centerfold modules. But the lion’s share of the stuff I preserved were character classes. Back in the eighties, whenever the folks at Dragon came up with a new NPC class, someone felt obliged to run it as a PC. After all, “NPC class” meant “‘Nother Player Character class,” right? I experimented with the halfling Guardian, the Bandit, my favorite was the Duelist (see Dragon #73); however, I must confess, there is a nunnery in the Pomarj that learned to hide whenever my Anti-Paladin rode into town. I even ran a Sentinel once, perhaps the most boring thing to play this side of a Cloistered Cleric. My friend Danny, at different times, played a Samurai, a Berserker, and a Smith. Victor perfected the Duelist. But, my pal Aaron seemed to be born for one purpose: to play the Jester. Me, I never ran one. As a teen, I took myself much too seriously, and never cared much for the thieving classes anyway, so I didn’t see the appeal. But, there was one thing that did intrigue me in the Jester section of good old Dragon #60: “Diarmuid’s Last Jest.” It was a short story (and I believe a spell) that explores that old cliche “died laughing.”

Proving that other cliche, that “truth is stranger than fiction,” Prof. Rob’t MacDougall, Propt’r & Gen. Mg’r of Old Is The New New, posted about an epidemic of laughter that occurred in Tanganyika in 1962 which was appropriately named the Tanganyikan Laughter Epidemic . While all of the Tanganyikan outbreak’s victims eventually recovered,. there actually have been people who literally died laughing.

For example, a Burmese king Nandabayin reportedly died laughing back in 1599. Then, in 1975, an English bloke named Alex Mitchell died laughing while watching The Goodies on the tellie. As recently as 2003, Damnoem Saen-um, a Thai ice cream truck driver, died of a suspected heart attack after laughing nonstop for two minutes in his sleep. Talk about a “rough night in Bangkok.” Oh wait, that’s “rough night in Jericho.” And it’s “One night in Bangkok.”

Nevermind.

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