On Cinco de Mayo, I was chatting a bit with D., my newest bro. He made a joke, we all started laughing, and he said, “There it is!” “What, my laugh?” I asked.

“Yes! When I first met you, your laugh freaked me out,” he said, “but then I really liked it.”

“And then you wanted to make me laugh just so you could hear it?” I said.

He pointed right at me, shocked that I had read his mind. “Exactly!”

In that moment, I suddenly understood, at least partially, why I constantly misread signals. Guys try to make me laugh because I have a really loud laugh (as anyone who knows me or has heard the podcast knows). There’s nothing more validating to your sense of humor than to have someone laugh uproariously at your joke. I do that for people.

In fact, at my friend Liz’s wedding, our friend Dave came all the way over to my table at one point to make some joke. He looked disappointed when I only laughed a little. “I bet those guys that they could hear your laugh all the way over there,” he said, a bit crestfallen. He wasn’t disappointed that I wasn’t laughing; he was disappointed because he had just lost $5.

When a guy repeatedly tries to make me laugh, I think he’s interested in me. But no. It’s purely for their ego. Or, alternately, to win a bet. I don’t factor into the equation at all except that I happen to be the vehicle for my obnoxiously loud laugh.

I feel oddly better now that I’m aware of this, even though it means that I was misreading the one signal I thought I could actually read. Why did no one ever teach me this stuff?