So, I laugh

I was a good kid. Actually, I was a great kid–the best brown-noser to ever walk the Daisy Ingraham Elementary halls. But even good kids do bad things.

I was sent to the principle's office twice during my time in elementary school. Once for receiving an award...and the other for giggling. Total badass.

My friend Callie and I were cut from the same cloth. Both blonde, both pale, both in love with the sea and dogs and Yoon Hong, the new foreign kid, and both highly prone to a serious case of the giggles. 

We found everything funny–fat pencils, skinny pencils, blowing bubbles, the word "dribble", the letter "a," Roald Dahl, Larry the janitor/treasure hunter–everything. In the first grade, we earned the title "giggle girls" and in the second grade we were sent to the principal's office for it. That's how much I love to laugh, and despite my run-ins with academia law, I still do.

Sometimes, sitting at my desk trying to be a copywriter, scraping at the edges of creativity, I will write a line that makes me laugh out loud. Don't feel bad about laughing at your own joke. Sure, maybe not everyone will find it funny, maybe it's a little too messed up to say out loud, maybe it's downright stupid. But if it makes you laugh, enjoy it. Life is too short to repress laughter.

Watching others laugh is like having a full conversation with them about all their hopes and dreams. It is, in my opinion, the most genuine human reaction. People can fake cry about anything and get mad over the silliest things, but you know a fake laugh when you hear it. The things that make us laugh are the things that still and always will appeal to our childish spirit–our 7 year-old selves that remain, suppressed by bills and taxes and politics. The part of us that still has us believing in unicorns and dragons. The part of us that keeps up the illusion of Santa Claus for the children as long as possible. The part of us that we will hopefully still be when we are wrinkled and have grown (and then shrunk a couple inches). 

We were our truest selves as children. We acted out of pure emotion, unaware of the distinction between what should be and what is. Our behavior was not tainted or repressed by expectation. As children we were nothing but ourselves, because there was no one else to be. This is the part of us that laughs.