La Voz de Galicia – October 19, 2025 →
We are four sisters, and each one of us is a world of her own. I attribute it to the fact that there are thirteen years between the oldest (Teté) and the youngest (me). Each of us was raised in a completely different historical and personal moment, and that must have a big impact; after all, it’s not the same to be born in Caracas and return to Ourense during the last years of the dictatorship as it is to be born in Ourense in the middle of democracy. Or at least that’s what I think, since all of this is just my conjecture. Our mother never really talked about the differences in how she raised us (those things aren’t talked about), but she always said we were very different and that it was important to her that we grew up to be independent beings…
Today, I was planning to write a column about what it means to be born at a particular moment in a family’s life, about what it means to be the first, the second, the third, or the fourth child. But suddenly one of my sisters sent one of those messages with a meme or a video she finds hilarious, and I started thinking about how different our senses of humor are. Why do some things make some of us laugh a lot, and not at all for others? What makes us develop such radically different senses of humor? And I think of those old Cantinflas movies that made my father laugh so much, and how hard it is for me to find them funny now; but also of the fact that every time I see one, I remember my father smiling.
A sense of humor is as complex and diverse as each of us. And even though we’re not always aware of why certain things make us laugh, the truth is that, somehow, without really knowing how or why, those things define us
