The thought has occurred to me – often. (I’ll get back to the intriguing premise of a thought “occurring” some other time, here or elsewhere.)

In fact, the occurring thought caused Umberto Eco to write a well-received novel in which clerics died in a number of unpleasant ways because curiosity got the best of them. Curiosity over what? Over a forbidden book. Why was the book forbidden? Because it dealt with… no, I can’t speak the word. Forbidden.

Why, in illustration of this post, did I choose the reverse image of a seamstress’ shop as seen in another shop window? Two reasons offer themselves up after the fact. The first says: you grabbed this shot in fond recollection of an imaginary canine inspector you had called Inspecteur Magret and of an imaginary parrot who went by the name of Pauline. Some of their adventures, now lost to the world and thee, occurred on and around this street corner. (We pause for a whiff of nostalgia).

The second post-facto reason says – no, doesn’t say, shoots up a snapshot from the mental file: that of a nun and several classmates in school uniform, convulsed with laughter. I don’t recall the specifics other than for the fact I’d been banished from one convent and sent to this other one. There was some kind of evening gathering going on after chapel and I was acting the clown as I often do in public, I’m afraid. Yes, bless me Father for I have sinned, I caused Sister Whatever-Her-Name-Was to grow red in the face and to (almost) split her garment from the belly shaking. The fact hysterical bouts of laughter occur with some frequency in confined quarters of utter seriousness tempers my feat with a heavy dose of modesty.

Nonetheless. There may be some scientific basis for the existence of a behavioral law wherein the tensile strength exercised by seriousness of the most sobering kind does lead to bouts of uncontrollable laughter, at times. Too bad the lawmakers don’t step back sometimes and catch themselves as reflected in their mirror image. You know, such as in the first appearance of a celebrated nonsense poem in Through the Looking Glass that reads thus :

YKCOWREBBAJ

sevot yhtils eht dna, gillirb sawT’

and so on.