"Humor is also a way of saying something serious."

T.S. Eliot

Just as one snowflake can trigger an avalanche, one person’s laughter can change the world.

The possibility of nukes in Iran, famine, pestilence, the disappearance of rural county timber payments and the appearance of athlete’s foot are no laughing matters.

Humor, though, helps put the turbulence of life into perspective.

Take Donald Trump. Please. If the entrepreneur took himself seriously, he’d trade that red mop for a fashionable blonde broom.

Humorists make the spinach of life palatable. People who find history dull as a mud bog will eagerly wade through humor writer Dave Barry’s account of U.S. presidents from Washington’s hippopotamus ivory teeth to Nixon going down in curse-word blizzard.

Want proof of the power of laughter? Check out the late comedian Bob Hope’s 54 honorary university degrees. Hope found humor not in dirty words but in clean soap-on-a-rope fun.

Some laughs are a delight to listen to. Others are torture. But even a laugh like actress Brittany Murphy’s ("8 Mile") can help the world once it takes its fingers out of its ears.

"It’s a terrific laugh because it’s so not pretty," writes Devin Gordon in Newsweek. "It is deep and hiccuping and very ungirlish. Any time you make her laugh you know it’s genuine, because no one would laugh this way on purpose."

I, too, have a suspect laugh.

Blame University of Oregon journalism professors. We students would tape interviews and then play them back for the class, causing student sharks to launch a feeding frenzy. We were ripped to shreds for responses like "Unhuh unhuh unhuh" and the swallowed-gym-socks "HA-HOCKs" in response to humorous bits.

My laugh on tape sounded like the noise a driver makes after filling his rig up with gas and seeing the bill.

Ever since, I’ve feared the titter, the giggle, the guffaw and especially the belly laugh.

I avoid rolling in the aisle. And wrenching spasms of laughter are out of the question, especially considering the risk to the lower back.

I’ve become the ultimate tough audience. The only thing I can muster, when confronted with something incredibly funny, usually is a forlorn "Ha."

By the time people graduate from high school, they should have developed a laugh that can be safely trotted out in public. Why not make a satisfactory laugh a requirement for graduation? Those who added wit to the situation could perhaps become the laughatorian and give a funny speech at graduation.

Whether or not our attempts at chuckling are pleasant or include embarrassing squeaks and bubbles, we still should strive to laugh at some point every day, even if it is only with delight at waking up again.

In this time of escalating health care costs, it’s good and free medicine.

As Alan Ball, the writer of the HBO series "Six Feet Under," says, "I think humor is a necessary tool for survival."

The world is a serious place, especially with the troubles in the Middle East and the fear of terrorists worming under the soil at home.

Still, every time I think of Donald Trump’s hair I get a case of the HA-HOCKS.

Reach the author at jpetersen@lagrandeobserver.com .