Y’all ever had one of those out-of-control belly laughs with a friend, the kind where tears pour down your face and you’re gasping for breath? I’ve got to share this story, even if it might shock some, because the laughter was just too good to keep to myself.
So, last week, I was on the phone with my dear friend Kayla, who lives in Arizona. As usual, we dove heart-first into catching up, discussing the big and small aspects of life.
Suddenly, I heard this strange noise. “Hold up a minute,” I said to Kayla. “There’s a really odd noise coming from my bedroom.” As I walked in, the noise got louder—a buzzing, mechanical sound, like a drill or some kind of power tool.
Now, I live in a concrete apartment building with hot water heating, so airborne noises don’t travel between units. But if someone drops a penny on the hardwood floor above me, I hear it loud and clear. I figured someone next door was drilling into the wall, except... the sound seemed to be in my bedroom.
“What is that?” Kayla could hear it too.
I moved slowly toward the sound, right next to my bed. I’d recently made my small room feel larger by getting rid of two dressers and replacing the bedside table with a low wooden cabinet with a file drawer and a smaller shallow drawer above.
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice tinged with trepidation. “It sounds like it’s coming from this room.” I crept up on the cabinet. The sound got louder. I held out my hand and touched the cabinet. “Ooo!” I pulled my hand back as if I’d touched a hot burner. “It’s coming from inside the filing cabinet!”
“Don’t hang up the phone!” Kayla shouted, sensing my fear. “What do you want me to do?”
Do? What could she do? She was three thousand miles away! Call the laws if the phone suddenly went dead?
“Do you think it’s the mouse?” Kayla asked. I’ve been having an on-again-off-again battle with a small brown mouse trying to make my home his.
“What, the mouse went out and bought a power tool to try to intimidate me into letting him stay?”
“Well, what is it then?”
“I don’t know...” My voice involuntarily slid up half an octave. “...but it’s definitely coming from the filing cabinet.” I moved my hand slowly toward the top of the low cabinet, and laughed nervously. “It’s like the filing cabinet is... possessed... I can’t even think of what it could be. It’s filled with... files!” I took a breath. “Okay, I’m going to open the top drawer.”
I jerked the drawer open and jumped back. I don’t know what I expected. A drill-wielding mouse? Some kind of angry file-drawer ghost?
And then I collapsed onto the floor laughing. “Oh no!”
“What is it?”
I was laughing so hard I could hardly speak. “It’s... the vibrator... that’s in the top drawer. Somehow it turned itself on!”
Kayla was laughing now too. “Oh, that’s too funny.”
“Good grief. I was actually scared of the filing cabinet!” I sputtered back.
And we just kept laughing, our giggles egging each other on. My sides ached, tears streamed, and I had to gulp for air.
“Attack of the pent-up vibrator!”
“Ghost of vibrators past!”
Is there anything more able to dissolve tension held in the body than belly laughter? More able to make you feel like you’re nine years old again than laughing over something completely silly with a dear friend? After a while, we wiped our eyes and calmed down—but what a treat shared silliness is, what a blessing and a release to laugh about our own active imaginations and something so harmless and fun.
That’s what I wish for you, for us, for the world this week: belly laughter that shakes out all the stored tension, that reminds us of how silly our fears sometimes are, that lets us feel that the gift of being human is about more than meaningful co-creations, as wonderful and necessary as those are, but also includes our capacity to laugh together.
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