The best medicine

I love to laugh.  It keeps me in touch with the simple things in life, replenishes my spirit and just feels good.  Here are ten laughter-filled moments of my past in no particular order.

One time…

1. I woke up at 7 o’clock on my bedroom floor with my head on a seventh grade science book and panicked.  I rushed into the kitchen and began making a bowl of cereal in tears.  I had fallen asleep studying for a big science test and was not prepared.  My family was sitting at the kitchen table and asked me what I was doing.  I replied, “I’m making breakfast!”  They asked me why and I excitedly said “I’ve got to get dressed and I’m going to fail me test today!”  Then my dad said something and I began to yell.  I don’t remember what I said but halfway through I realized that my dad was still home, everyone was eating dinner, I was still in my volleyball uniform and finally… it was 7 o’clock AT NIGHT.
2. My sister and I decided we were going to measure our bodies from head to toe, head to chin, just the neck, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, groin to ankle, feet, hands, reach, nose, knee to hip.  You get the picture, everything.  Turns out my legs were an inch longer than hers.  Her torso was two inches longer than mine!  The visual was too much and we were in fits of laughter.  My mom was too as she observed the spectacle.  Oh and we were sixteen and seventeen at the time.
3. I was driving my carpool to soccer practice as a high school senior and we stopped to get iced water at a drive through.  As I pulled out and took the sharp right turn onto the street from the drive through lane, the waters began spilling.  I tried to stop the drinks from spilling but did not stop the car.  We ended up all the way over the curb and back into the drive through lane, perpendicular to the window this time.  I waved at the clerk who was only about two feet from the front of the car, backed up onto the busy street and went along to practice. 
4. I felt that knowing my best friend was taking a run meant that I should take the opportunity to drive alongside her through town and sing “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler as loud as I could accompanied by my stereo on full blast.  Nice.
5. My mom and I got into an incredibly intense sword fight with our empty wrapping paper cardboard.  It was pretty hard core until we couldn’t continue due to not being able to breathe and having to use the bathroom.
6. My brother and I spent a summer in one of the most boring cities in America, a college town with no summer life.  We decided our best option one day was to count our steps to the fast food restaurant where we got soda daily and the movie store.  To this day it’s the most talked about thing we did all summer.   I can’t remember how many steps it took us but I remember it was a good time.
7. The first week on my college campus, my friend and I ran into one of the school’s basketball players in the bookstore.  I only knew his name was Hans because my friend was freaking out about how cute he was and told me to talk to him.  Well, of course we made sure we got in line directly behind him and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hi, you’re Hans and I’m Franz, nice to meet you!”  No idea what I was thinking but the look on his face was classic and my friend, of course, was mortified.  It was seriously like I was in a movie the first day of classes a couple days later and he sat down next to me.  He looked at me and just shook his head.  Awesome.
8. There was a cereal commercial on TV during Christmas time where this little kid would string the cereal for the tree and talk about it.  One of his lines was something like, “I love these little crunchy little cornballs.”  Well, my sister and I found this completely adorable with his little boy learning to talk voice and one day my sister broke out the line… at the McDonalds drive-through order intercom.  The whole carpool was in the car and she says, “Hi, can we have four vanilla yogurts on those crunchy little cornball cones?” with the accent!  Oh man, even writing it I can’t stop laughing.  Years of entertainment.
9. When I was in seventh grade I was a lecture during the school mass.  Unfortunately, so was my best friend and we talked throughout the whole mass on the altar.  As the whole school was being escorted back to their classrooms, the eighth grade teacher found me and while pointing right at my face yelled, “You were a wart on the sanctuaries nose!”  I didn’t laugh right then but when I got back to my classroom I was brought to the front and told to apologize to the class.  I got the giggles so bad I couldn’t do it.  Of course it didn’t help that I started by telling my classmates what the teacher had said.  Maybe I was being a bit defiant.
10. My dad came to pick me up from my last final the last day of my last year of college.  He had been packing up the car while I was in the exam so we could take off across the country right away.  I came out of the building and there was my dad open arms, the biggest smile on his face, a bloody forehead, a dirty and bloody shirt and torn up sweatpants.  He was cheering for me “You did it!  This is my daughter, she’s a graduate!”  Well, it so happened that a big football player approached the steps to the building while this was going on.  In the flurry of excitement my dad just got a glance at him and noticed the all too cool fashion the football player had going on with one leg of his sweats rolled up over his knee.  My dad stopped pointed and exclaimed, “Nice legs!”