LMAO

So just when was the last time you had a good laugh? I'm talking a belly laugh. One that brought tears to the corners of your eyes? If you're having to strain your brain to remember, that's not a good sign. If you're expecting me to provide one for you, well, you still won't have one in recent memory. But I suspect that laughter is, indeed, good medicine as The Reader's Digest told us years ago.

Six of us went out to eat a few nights ago and were interrupted by the table of six next to us with explosive laughter. Normally, I wouldn't have minded. But some guffaws are just that. They sound like the word guffaw, which really doesn't connote the best description of a good laugh.

There is never as good a laugh as that of kids. When they get tickled, not physically, but happily (and tickled does connote happiness to me) their laughter is the sweetest music. It spreads out my smile just to hear them. If I can see them, too, well, I'm just even more pleased.

Long time readers might recall that I had an eighth grade English teacher who didn't much care for me and my joie de vivre attitude in her class. Until I became an English teacher, and then we were good buds. Certainly I forgave her because I always liked her and knew that she was right. But she scolded me once in class telling me that it didn't seem to take much to entertain me. Even as a 13 year-old I knew that was right, and it remains so to this day.

But she wanted me to feel bad. I did. But only because I had gotten caught doing something I shouldn't have. I was just hoping she didn't tell Coach Thompson who had given me a petty stern (and very helpful) lecture earlier in the day. Only one flaw in my junior high character should be addressed in one day.

The laughter, I see I've abandoned for a sentimental swing to 1961. So I'll end with one more observation. All my family have great individual laughs. They're as different as their personalities, but they're all great. No guffaws, no jackass eating thistles laughs, not even a ganarf, ganarf.

I'm glad, too, because the only thing worse than a bad laugh is no laugh at all.