The only thing that ever made sense in my life
Is the sound of my little girl laughing
Alive and happy in the summertime
–Everclear/Songs From An American Movie, Pt. 2
One of my favorite memories is of a book club weekend at the beach. There is a substantial amount of drinking that goes on at the typical book club weekend, and this was no exception. The typical Saturday goes something like this: wake up whenever you do. Have coffee. Maybe put a little somethin’ in it. Maybe a little somethin’ more with the second cup. Have a few more. Then a beer with your mid-morning snack and lunch. Then people who are napping types, do that while others walk on the beach or catch some sun while reading. More beers or cocktails as the afternoon wears on. Then dinner. The plan that day was to meet at K’s house where we would (drink all afternoon) cook dinner together. Several of us went over early that afternoon, and the others decided to take a nap and come over a little later. For some reason, I wasn’t drinking very much. I was alone in that. I wasn’t completely sober, but I’d only had a cocktail or two. I was sitting at the kitchen bar watching two of my girlfriends attempt to chop veggies for dinner, while another looked for something to snack on.
They had been partaking of some herbal therapy in addition to copious applications of wine and beer.
They were….well…not being very efficient.
They were chopping in slow motion.
Chop…..chop…..chop…..one slice at a time. A slice about every 5 seconds. Very carefully. Trying very hard to be in full control. And these are both women who know how to operate a knife pretty damn well.
I was glad that they’d started chopping so early, because at their rate the Evil Jungle Prince was not going to be ready for hours!
I kept sipping my drink, trying to hold in a laugh. Glad to be where I was.
K looked over at me, and asked me what was wrong.
I pointed at the Slow Motion Women’s Chopping Team.
She started to laugh.
She laughed so hard she fell down on the floor laughing.
She was curled up in a ball on the tile with tears running down her face, gasping for breath.
The SMWCT looked over and (slowly) asked us what was so funny.
K was still incapable of speech. Still laughing.
I looked at them blankly and said “yooooou twooooooo aaaaaare chooooooppppping verrrrrry verrrry sloooooowwwwwly.”
Huh?
They looked confused and went back to their chop….chop….chopping.
I took another sip of my drink, and looking at K, I lost it. Completely. There is something cleansing about that kind of laugh. Your entire body melts. You relax. You are happy.
You are totally in that moment.
More than anything else, laughing makes us human. All of the kinds of laughter. The rueful laugh, the bitter laugh, the polite laugh, the guffaw, the snorting laugh, the surprised laugh, the giggle, and the whole body laugh.
When I started this post, it was with a quickly scribbled note as is often the case.
The note contained a snippet of a song lyric about laughing, and this:
laughter. crucial. human
Why I write.
?
So when I was thinking about what I wanted to write about, I found this note days later and wondered what the fuck I had meant.
I don’t know.
That’s not quite true. I know that I wanted to write about laughter and how it is part of what makes us human.
Why I write?
I am not sure.
Either of what that part of my note meant or the larger question.
I don’t really write, I scribble. I scrawl. You can read it because a modern scrawl is typed very neatly, but it’s still a scrawl. There’s not much in the way of editing for the most part. It’s just kind of slung onto a page.
Why?
Sometimes I want to make myself or other people laugh. Sometimes I want to remember something, like K’s epic laugh that Summer day in Tierra del Mar. Sometimes I want to get it out so I can let go of it.
Words, like laughter, are part of what makes us human. And like a good laugh, words are a lot better when they are shared.
I hope.