Night of a hundred and one, “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa-haas”

Last night, family and friends gathered to celebrate my sister’s 36^th birthday. I have a headache this morning, partly from the four beers and two glasses of wine, but mostly from all the laughing. My sister is quite lucky to have such wonderful friends come out and help her celebrate. I’m lucky to know them too.  My family, of course, it goes without saying how glad we are to have all of them, and to have been blessed with such wonderfully vicious senses of humor.

I cackled and howled with laughter all through the night and it was fantastic. I’m sure this little party was the loudest thing the condo complex my sister lives in ever heard. I’m positive we would have easily drowned out any thumping bass line emanating from whatever hood rat jalopy that might have been driving by.  We are a family of loud talkers and even louder laughers. So if you want to roll with us you have to love to laugh.

It would seem that my sister and I surround ourselves with people who love to laugh, and laugh loudly. I don’t think we really are very close with any real mousy, quiet types. If we are, they are often lost in the din and clatter of the rest of the people we know. In fact, if someone is too quiet we automatically mistrust them, as if to say, “What are they hiding?”

Not that there’s anything wrong with being quiet at times. I appreciate a little silence often, but if we’re all being raucous and you’re being quiet, then it’s likely we’ll never know you’re there. Also you have to be open to a lot of lovable ridicule. I think we poke a lot of fun at each other. Maybe it’s the Irish way of keeping each other a little more grounded and not get too high on ourselves. It’s always good to have someone who you care about let you know that, yes, indeed, you’re feces does not smell like roses. Unless you’ve been eating roses, and if you’ve been doing that, you’re weird.

It’s almost impossible in this group of family and friends to get through a whole story without someone interjecting with a joke or a humorous comment. A short two minute story might take 15 minutes to tell with all of us adding our two cents with each new part of the story we hear.  You’re lucky to finish the story at all at times because the joke about the story becomes bigger than the story itself.

I’m sure a lot of families and friends are like this and my experience isn’t unique but that’s the thing that makes us all part of bigger world, our common denominator with all human beings, everywhere. Laughter and the listening to the exploits of those you love and that love you. It’s the most human thing there is.

Sure, life is made of atoms, molecules and DNA, but it’s really the twinkle in the eyes of your family and friends as they laugh with you that makes it all worth it.