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Excerpt from Happiness is a Funny Thing,
Copyright 2009
by Dave Caperton
Laughter: The Next Best Thing
Guess what is the most bonding of all emotional experiences, the one that brings people together and most effectively breaks down barriers of race, religion, age, gender, and socio-economics? If you guessed "humor" then you'd be, well, wrong. Shared laughter actually comes in second. The number one experience to bond people is actually disaster.
Katrina, 9/11, the California wildfires that killed and displaced fellow Americans were all terrible catastrophes, but they did bring out some of the best in people who opened their hearts, their wallets and some even their homes for the victims. But, for all of the good that it sparks in others, we really don't want to engineer disasters just so we can inspire generosity and human connections, so we'll settle for the next best thing. Laughter, when a group shares it, is a common emotional experience that erases boundaries and brings people together in a positive collective experience.
Over the past twenty years or so, companies have spent billions of dollars on team-building experiences for their employees who spend anywhere from a half day to a week at a time at retreats climbing ropes, rafting down fast moving rivers, or bruising office chair-shaped fannies in saddles atop temperamental horses.
I have presented at some of these outings and occasionally I have even participated. A couple of years ago, I was booked to present at a team-building retreat for a company that recruits physicians for hospitals around the U.S. It took place at a dude ranch in Michigan and in the advance letter I was invited to take part in the "survivor series" of planned events. I was instructed to bring along my cowboy hat and boots and "clothing you won't mind soiling".
It sounded like fun. Having grown up watching Bonanza and The Big Valley, it was kind of a dream come true to ride and rope like my childhood heroes. As it turned out, though, as a cowboy I was more Billy Crystal than Ben Cartwright.
It started out well. I put on my western gear and I thought I looked pretty authentic except for the price tag still dangling from my cowboy hat. We rode horses along a trail that wound through a forest of tall pines. We ate steaks prepared chuck-wagon style, which meant well charred and on metal plates balanced on our knees. All along the gentle trail it was kind of a Roy Rogers experience, but when we got to the rodeo arena, it went Rawhide.
The arena was about the size of a football field and surrounded by a tubular steel fence. It was covered with a deep loose mixture of sawdust and dirt and other "organic" material. The entire area reeked of livestock. This was to be the site of our team-building survivor games.
We formed into teams and entered the ring for a few activities that included prosaic games like tug-of-war and a version of tag that required us to stomp balloons tied to the ankles of opposing team members. Then they herded calves into the ring, each one with a ribbon tied to its tail. We chased the poor things around like Masai warriors on a lion hunt, yanking cattle-scented ribbons off their south ends with our bare hands. Let me tell you, there's not enough Purell in the world to make that smell go away.
In the next part of the competition we broke into smaller groups for a variety of undignified activities like using verbal instructions to guide a blindfolded team member through an obstacle course that included barrels and piles of cow manure.
I didn't volunteer for that one, but I had to participate somewhere so when the activities leader said "chute dogging" and no one raised a hand, I half-heartedly lifted a palm to signal that I was a team player. Unfortunately, the leader saw me and said, "Ok, you!" Since I was the only volunteer, he drafted another chute-dogger, a woman in her forties with salon nails and perfectly coiffed hair. The only thing even remotely western about her outfit was the turquoise in her earrings.
We were led into one end of the ring by a wide gate outside of which stood a large bovine creature with long horns serenely chewing his cud (whatever that is). This animal was as high as my chest at his shoulder and although I'm no judge of livestock, I'd put his weight at about the equivalent of a full city bus. The instructor gave us the goal. We were to work together to "dog" or wrestle down this powerful beast as he was driven with a slap on his rump from the chute. I was speechless. Cow wrestling? Why don't they call it by a term that I would have recognized before I volunteered like, "recreational trampling," or "suicide by beefsteak"? I've seen the crazies at the running of the bulls in Pamplona, but even they have the sense to run away from the horns.
I was supposed to engage this monster and muscle him to the ground. I remembered the letter had instructed me to wear clothes that I wouldn't mind soiling, but I had no idea they meant from the inside. I completely lost my David facing Goliath philosophy. I never killed a lion or a bear and the one visit I ever made to a farm I got chased by a duck.
I looked over at my partner and I could see immediately that she had no intention of breaking any of her freshly balanced nails, so there was really no point in discussing strategy. I just spaced myself out a ways and nodded my head to release the beast.
With a loud slap that raised a cloud of dust from his well-muscled backside, the steer bolted out of the gate and ran right by my partner who squealed girlishly and then for some inexplicable reason, slapped him again as he sped by. This additional giddy-up inspired the animal to a higher gear and as he charged by I wrapped my arms around the horns and was immediately yanked off my feet so hard that my right foot popped out of my boot.
With a strength borne of pure undiluted terror, I hung on to the horns like Indiana Jones gripping the hood ornament on that truck. Amazingly, my hat stayed on but the brim flapped up a la Corporal Agarn. My lips skinned back from my clenched teeth and the whites of my eyes showed all around and-in the fierce wind produced by the hellish speed of the panicked animal-dried out so that I couldn't blink. Behind me I left stuttering tracks in the dirt from my remaining boot while my right sock fluttered like a flag of surrender.
Finally, physics overpowered adrenaline and my arms gave out. I lost my hold and-still unable to close my eyes or lips-plowed , face down, into the nitrogen-rich surface of the rodeo ring. I came up sputtering and rubbing my eyes looking like a coal miner but smelling like a used plumber's snake. When I got back to my cabin, I remember that it took a half hour to floss the rodeo ring out of my teeth.
Later, after the longest shower of my life, the whole group met for dinner and karaoke. Around the tables, everyone recounted the stumbles and comical pratfalls and yes, my short, terrifying ride and subsequent face plant in the rodeo ring.
I don't know if there were any real team-building lessons from the tug-of-war, the ribbon chasing, or the chute-dogging. It doesn't matter. The real teambuilding took place later as everyone laughed at mutual embarrassments. Those moments of comedy were worth the trip and have become the bond that took a work team made of individuals and forged a unit built on the shared experience of laughter. Falling face-first into fertilizer may not qualify as a disaster, but it's the next best thing.
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