Funny Friends: Laughter is the Best Medicine

I’ve done more laughing in the past 2 1/2 days that I have in the whole last year. My best old friend (we met 24 years ago) drove from Virginia and has been visiting for three days. She just rode away in her cute convertible with a smile on her face and we both had stomach aches from laughing so hard.

MEK has got the quickest wit and absolutely the best sense of humor. She can truly find something funny out of almost any situation. (And obviously I share her sense of humor, because we once had fun going to a funeral together.)

See another blog post about an escapade she  was involved with in A Puzzling Birthday Experience.

When our kids were young, we were both stay-at-home moms and had lots of play dates with the kids – taking them to parks, playgrounds, the beach, etc. We were both really into being great parents. Later, we returned to work and were both working stressful jobs (at the same major employer for a while), and we’d meet for a Coke on Saturday afternoons to  tell stories to vie for “who had the worse week.” The goal was to take all the stressful things that happened (big and small) in work, parenting and life — and relate them to each other (venting) in a funny way, so we could both laugh about it. It was cheaper (and more fun) than a therapist…

We’ve taken trips together, too. The worst one (we both agree) was when we were really poor at-home-moms who wanted a get-away and we rented one hotel room for two nights in a resort geared toward kids in Myrtle Beach. The kids were all wound up and not getting along together a lot of the time – and to say it was chaotic was putting it mildly. It definitely wasn’t the peaceful, idyllic vacation we’d imagined. We’ve agreed it was a miracle we remained friends after that and always immediately follow that sentence next with: “What were we thinking?!”

Once the kids were grown, we went on a cruise together, which was WAY better than the Myrtle Beach trip. We played trivia games, sat by the pool and read books, went on shore excursions. The most fun, though, was getting air-brushed tattoos done on the cruise ship, then posing for photos in front of real tattoo parlors in one of the ports we visited. We’re both very conservative, but we thought we’d fool our teenaged kids.

My tattoo said “Luscious” and the words, along with a set of red lips, were located on my chest. She got a butterfly on her upper arm.

Needless to say, none of our children believed for a second that we’d actually gotten real tattoos… which was sort of disappointing!

I’m grateful to have a friend like her — and hope that everyone has a similar friend. Laughing is definitely better than crying, and having a friend who can help you see the funny side of every situation makes it a lot easier to go through life.