Laughing all the way to the Bank

Yesterday on the train I overheard a conversation which ended in one of the people giggling a little and saying "Ha, if they do that, we'll be laughing all the way to the bank."  I know that this is just a saying, a turn of phrase, an idiom, and shouldn't be taken literally, no that would be stupid.  

So let's imagine this person did get some sort of windfall and planned to laugh all the way to the bank.  So they're driving along on the way to the bank, laughing, and the amount of laughing they are doing makes them inadvertently swerve the car which arouses the suspicion of a nearby policeman.  The policeman pulls them over and asks them for their driving license, but the response they get is a hearty laughter which keeps going no matter how much they insist the driver takes this situation seriously.  Because it is serious, swerving around on the road can be dangerous and there might have been children walking along the road at the time.  Think of the children!  Eventually the person would end up in a police cell, still laughing, and by the time it got to their court date they would have likely had some sort of psychological assessment which would likely not be in their favour.  So instead of doing time for the road swerving, they'd probably end up in a psych ward full of other people laughing incessantly about inappropriate things.  Meanwhile their partner leaves with the kids, and the money that they thought was so funny to laugh about all the way to the bank is dwindled away because of court costs and child support.

And the cruel thing about this situation is that the person is still not at the bank, so according to their own rules they must keep laughing.  They're stuck.  Their life is over.  Thanks to an idiom.

Richard Lindesay

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