Sneeze

Everything is funny. I've learned that if you can see the funny in something then it doesn't have to bother you. I gained my wicked and twisted sense of humor from my mother, and I suppose that even if I don't look at the bright side, I can at least laugh at the funny side. Everything, and I mean everything, is funny. The irony of hypocrisy is funny, the things people say at three o' clock in the morning are funny, school is funny and even death is funny. Just look at the Gashlycrumb Tinies as exhibit A and my near-hysterical laughter as exhibit B. The silliness of twenty-six, (TWENTY-SIX!) children (in alphabetical order!) dying just brings me to tears. I'm crying because I'm laughing so hard. Even in times of tragedy, if I can laugh, then I will not cry. If I can't laugh at something, then I might cry. But if I can laugh at it, then I don't have to cry. I recall a time when just such a thing happened. I was in Iowa and my grandmother had just died the night before. My aunt and I went to the grocery store to buy flowers for the funeral that was going to be later that weekend. We walked in and started looking at the flowers. It was about May, and so, along with the rest of the bouquets of flowers there were flowers with balloons which were fond farewells for graduates. Some of the balloons had sayings like "Congrats, Grad!" and "Good Luck!", but others had things like "So Long!" and "You'll Be Missed!" The irony of the juxtaposition of these cheerful farewells and our recent grief was too much. My aunt and I looked at each other, and realized we had both realized how ... funny it was that there should be a balloon that squealed brightly, "YOU'LL BE MISSED!!" Then it began. It started as stifled chuckles, then giggles, then full-blown laughter. We were laughing out loud at a balloon that had said, rather bluntly what we were already thinking. We turned to each other, our mouths stretched into rictuses forced by our now near-hysterical laughter. Our eyes were watering from laughing so hard, and we were silently screaming at each other with our eyes, "STOP LAUGHING!" "WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?!" "STOP IT!! YOU SHOULDN'T BE LAUGHING!" But we just couldn't stop. We were caught in a trap of laughing at something we were horribly guilty about laughing at, and we just couldn't stop. I clutched at my side and could feel myself straining to breathe as I continued laughing at the irony of the bright, shiny balloon in front of us. Eventually we stopped laughing and my breathing regulated, but the guilty half-smiles remained. We bought our flowers and headed back to the house, and a knowing look was exchanged between my aunt and I. We wouldn't speak of it. Our moment of awkward laughter was shared privately, and we wouldn't need to say anything more.