Month: December 2018

Laughing Matter

Since I tend to be relatively quiet and reserved, it makes me laugh when people are loud, crazy, or obnoxious, especially in public.  

One fall afternoon, I was in the car with my brother. He was driving, and I was in the passenger’s seat. The angle of the sun had turned a cloud into a rainbow (at least, the red to yellow portion of the spectrum). I’ve never seen anything like it. I pointed out the phenomenon, and my brother also got excited about it. A while later, he asked if the cloud was still there. Yes, and still colorful! He rolled down his window and called out, “WHOOOO!” then raised his arm out the window and flashed the horns hand gesture in victory. He drummed his palm against the car horn as another car approached in the opposite lane. Through my laughter, I tried to deter him. “They’re not gonna know why you’re honking!”  

I was reminded of this episode recently when the two of us were in the car again. A block into our trip, something caught my eye. “Ooh! Lights! I forgot about those!” I said excitedly. My brother knows that Christmas lights and are one of my favorite parts of the holiday season, so he humored me by driving toward the subdivision where I’d spotted them. As he navigated through the maze of streets, he asked, “Where was that house where they used to go all out, but they didn’t do it last year? Was it this one?” I looked toward the darkened building and empty yard alongside us. “With the jugs? Yeah.” A row of plastic milk jugs, about a foot apart, had bordered the lawn in other years. Each contained a large colored light bulb, creating the effect of an oversized strand of Christmas lights. My brother rolled down his window and yelled toward the house, “WHERE ARE THE JUGS?!” I couldn’t help but act as the straight man. ‘They probably don’t even live there anymore!’  

We step into these roles like a comfortable pair of shoes: he delivers the punch line, and I’m the laugh track.  

An Unlikely Story

For Thanksgiving, I visited my family in the Midwest. After the feast, my mom taught my brother & I a line dance (neither of us knew any line dances). Later, the three of us, along with my aunt, played a couple board games from the 80s that were designed for teenage girls: Slumber Party and Girl Talk. Slumber Party involves rolling 5 curlers into your hair, then adding or removing curlers as the game progresses. My brother followed the rules without complaining, while other people laughed at him. I remarked that he was a good sport to play along with us, and he reminded me that they were his games- he bought and owned them.  

 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 

One of my pick-me-ups is reading stories about unlikely animal friends. There’s the dog who splashes in the surf every morning with the dolphin who swims out to play, the baby hippo who found solace in the 130-year-old tortoise, the pit bull who acts as father to broods of chicks each spring.  

Sometimes I’d be jealous while reading these stories, thinking how enriching it could be to be part of an unlikely friendship, two contrasting melody lines blending into an elegant harmony. A few weeks ago, I realized that my brother is an unlikely animal friend. We don’t have the same hobbies or hang out in the same circles. If we hadn’t been related, I probably never would have talked to him or gotten to know him. Here, I already had what I’d been wishing for- I just didn’t recognize it.

Think of the Possibilities

In southern Arizona, I passed a series of signs on the freeway alerting drivers about dust storms. Some instructed us on actions to take if a dust storm suddenly blew in. Some signs cautioned that “Dust Storms May Exist Next 10 Miles” or “Gusty Winds May Exist.” It made me think about what else may exist over the next 10-mile stretch of landscape: UFOs riding unicorns, a busload of hitchhiking clowns, a field of glow-in-the-dark cacti, ice skating dinosaurs, a stampede of breakfast cereals, a snake charmer convention, jump roping balloon animals…  

Other signs warned “Zero Visibility Possible.” Of course, that made me think about what else is possible: becoming a professional basketball player, taking a clear photo of Bigfoot, breaking the world record for scarfing down hot dogs, uncovering a buried treasure, opening a barber shop, making a scientific discovery, finding a long-lost relative, moving to Denmark, developing telekinetic powers, tightrope walking in the circus, traveling in space, swimming with dolphins, climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl… 

Every now and then, I like to let my imagination dangle from the monkey bars, and I make a list of outlandish goals. Then the crux is to pick one of those activities to actually do. That’s how I eventually ended up on the road.