On my first day of kindergarten I met Kim Angel, and who knows what the reason was, but we were destined to be best friends. All of her many siblings were much older than she, so much so that she was the only child still living at home; I happened to be an only child too.
We clicked. We did everything together. We went to each other’s houses, we went to school together, church together, we even went with each other's families on vacation. The first time I remember going to the beach was with Kim. I also went to the fair for the first time with them. Her family loved it so much they were just shy of being carnies themselves.
When we got there, the first thing we had to do was look at all the exhibits and entries. We had to visit the livestock and also see how many ribbons the women of her family had won in the baking and pickling categories.
Then we made our way over to where the food was sold. There were candy apples, corn dogs, cotton candy, and my favorite: elephant ears. Not funnel cake, that cheap imitation, but big solid pieces of fried dough, doused with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
By this time it had gotten dark and our stomachs were full, so it was deemed the perfect time to ride the rides. I’m not sure whose brilliant idea this was, but it left me very nervous.
We bought our tickets and got in line to ride some monster called The Scrambler. It had five arms, and at the end of each arm there were several spinning carts. We must’ve both looked a little green around the gills because Mrs. Angel came over and told us as long as you laugh you can’t get sick.
Laughing and giggling had never been a problem for us, but this was just the impetus we needed. We laughed so hard through the entire ride that we could barely breathe, and we ended up almost getting sick from all the laughing.
Mrs. Angel must’ve been ahead of her time I guess because it wasn’t too long ago that Stephen Colbert offered the same wisdom, “You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time – of anything.”
This year has gotten off to a rough start. It has felt like we have a little black cloud hovering above us. This year has started with us needing both a new fridge and a new car, Paul's "retina incident" complete with emergency room visit, Madi‘s increased headaches, and now a leak in the roof.
Tempers might be shorter and frustration is certainly abundant. We still laugh, but it might be a little tougher lately. The other day we did try to lighten things up and use the famous Mel Brooke’s comedic line from Young Frankenstein when they say, “It could be worse. It could be raining.“ but we were checking on the bucket in the leaky attic when we tried it. Maybe that is what they call poor comedic timing.
