Sunday, August 14, 2011

Question For The Day

Sunday morning and I am not making pancakes or even so much as an egg sandwich and Mr. Moon is determined to get out into the garden NOW before the heat gets to be 10,110 degrees. (See Ms. Moon's heat index for explanation.)
Ah, the guilt, the guilt!
I need to get out there too and I should have made that man an egg sandwich. It's so easy for me but sometimes my rebellious spirit says why doesn't he make me an egg sandwich but the thought literally does not occur to him.

I was thinking about what I said about the Catholic wedding in that post last night and I did go to a Catholic wedding once when I was a teenager and I sat next to my across-the-street neighbor, a boy two years younger than I was and the kneeling and the Latin and the bells and the incense and the wine and the wafer got us to giggling and it was one of those horrible situations where if one tiny thing happens you are going to bust out in the biggest laughter of your life, laugh so hard that tears pour down your eyes, even as you are thinking to yourself oh god, oh god, this is horrible, this is the worst thing I have ever done and we couldn't look at each other and we were afraid, quite literally to breathe because if we had done more than take tiny sips of air that horrible, inappropriate laughter would have come out of us like an explosion and everyone, from the bride and the groom to the PRIEST IN HIS ROBES would have looked at us with horror and we would have had to roll ourselves down the aisle, too weakened with laughing to use our legs.

We managed, somehow, to contain ourselves. I wonder if he remembers that.

All right. I'm going to go make an egg sandwich and then go weed.

I ain't got no sermon today whatsoever and according to the (no) rules of the Church of the Batshit Crazy, that is just fine. Sermons may arise on a Tuesday night just as often as on a Sunday morning.

But let me ask you- did you ever do that? Have to literally shut down in order not to laugh at the most inappropriate time? Do you still remember the pain, the way your entire body wanted to let it out? Do you? Did you? Tell me.



19 comments:

  1. O her yes... I was famous for laughing and make the whole class laugh when I was 13/14 years old... And I clearly remember my dad being angry at my sister, which did not happen often, so that is probably why I do remember it so well, and he shake her - also very out of his ordinary peaceful demeanor and we had to keep our laughter so badly... I still get the envy to laugh even knowing that it would be highly inappropriate to laugh at that exact moment... Sigh. I called it raging hormones...

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  2. my grandma's funeral. my inappropriate cousin who thinks she is *all that* wore a black jersey wrap dress with 6 inch hooker heels and when she bent over to give my grandma a kiss in the casket one of her boobs fell out of her dress....

    my sisters and step mom and i just squeezed the hell out of each others hands the whole time because the overtly religious nature of the funeral service was bad enough (the pastor went on some weird ass pro life tangent) but i dont know if they noticed the tit part.

    xxalainaxx

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  3. Now that I'm a grown up and all I pretty much just say fuck it and cut loose with my donkey bray laugh. Life is too short to not laugh especially when everyone else is so solemn. Funerals are particularly difficult for me to get through.

    I'd love to cook you a fine and delicious and fancy meal. There wouldn't be any meat in it but you wouldn't miss it I promise it. Or maybe just an egg sandwich.
    love
    Rebecca

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  4. Photocat- It's such a strange phenomenon, isn't it? Laughter is far more than we think it is.

    Mrs. A- Oh boy. That boob would have done it for me. Oh yes.

    Madame King- And I would love to cook you a meal. I promise you, I am well-versed in vegetarian as well as vegan as well as soul-vegetarian as well as...
    I am cross-cultural and cross-dietary cook and eater and nothing would make me happier than to eat whatever you fixed. Or presented.

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  5. my gratherfather's funeral, what is it with funerals? well, my grandfather had been a big man in a tiny town, the teacher preacher policeman judge, and so the family went back there to bury him. All the cousins, city slickers that we were, had never seen such ruralness, especially the wooden church which rocked a foot to each side, i mean the entire building moved back and forth, when the bell was rung. Feeling awkward and out of our element, when that church started to rock above our heads we all burst into the giggles and it lasted the whole service. i mean, who thought it was good idea to put a pew full of 10 to 15 years olds to sit together? we completely disgraced our grandfathers memory. the people from his old town must have wondered at who he had spawned. but it is a precious memory for the cousins. all we have to say is "remember that church...?" and we all burst into laughter again, tears rolling down our faces. i think grandpa would like that.

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  6. Oh my. Never in church, but in middle and high school, oh yes. It's a wonder I didn't pee my pants. We would laugh until we cried and our stomachs ached. We used to pass notes around the classroom for laughs all the time, and once, well, I found a folded up note in the desk in science lab - someone had blown their nose in and it was an impressively awful dried green abstract art, and when I got done laughing, I passed it to my best friend who got into a laughing fit too, and she wrote pass it on and it made it halfway around the classroom before the teacher caught on and threw a fit. Half the class cracked up, the other half was certain we were insane. I know it's gross and inappropriate, but it cracks me up to this day thinking about the booger incident. You had to be there, maybe.

    Second best - remember pop rocks? the candy that crackled in your mouth? My friend slipped me some in spanish, only I didn't know what it was and thinking it was like a pixie stick, my favorite, I poured a bunch in my mouth. Which almost exploded. I practically choked laughing, and Janet had tears streaming down her face. Senor Roush sent us from the room that day. Oh yes, I remember the pain, it hurt so good. I wish it for all of us, often! Thanks for the memory trip. Good times.

    ps it would never occur to my husband to make me an egg sandwich either, but he does make me coffee sometimes and I feel like the queen. :)

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  7. Laughing at a funeral seems like such sweet relief. It's never happened to me that I remember. But growing up Catholic with Mass every morning before school and then all those very strict nuns, it seems like lunch time was when a person could finally breathe. Someone--sometimes me--sometimes a group of us would fall into hysterics and there would be milk coming out of everyone's noses like some kind of weird dairy miracle.
    That feeling of laughing and not being able to stop is something else--like possession in a good way. Hooray for it. And I love reading other people's comments on this blog. So! Thanks for that Mrs. Moon and oooof--that weeding! Take it easy out there, okay?

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  8. Hey Sister Moon, remember when I told you about that funeral I had to speak at for a patient when I started the "ugly cry" and this church-lady-deaconess-or-whatever-she-was started accosting me with a giant ball of Kleenex? Well that lady (who I didn't even know) kept wiping my snot and the more she did the more I cried until eventually I realized how ridiculous it all looked. This realization came after I saw my friend snickering in the third row. . . which made me half-cry/half-laugh. And this is even weirder than the "ugly cry" and twenty times more inappropriate.

    That's my version. A bit tangential, but dammit it's a good story and I know how much you appreciate a good tangent. :)

    Hugs to you and yours.

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  9. oh my goodness. well, my wife says i am incapable of making a long story short, so just bear with me.

    it was 1992 and we lived in a three room duplex. mama's high school sweetheart, the love of her life, had just moved in with his daughter in tow. this was either time #20 or time #31 for my mother and him dating. i cant remember. it took a long while for her to figure out that she did, in fact, hate him. the star of the story though is the boyfriend's dog. he moved in with us as well and we loved him immediately. he was a mastiff/great dane mix and HUGE and his name was chewy. well, back in those days, before country turned into twangy pop crap, we used to watch the country music awards religiously. everyone knew not to talk unless it was a commercial. that night we had made a big pot of chili with extra beans and while no one was looking i was feeding every other bite to chewy because i loved him so much. about halfway through the awards those beans hit. chewy would fart and we would crack up and mama would threaten to kill us all. once we finally got it under control, or so we thought, miss sweet sweet dolly parton came on to present an award to someone else. well, chewy is still farting away and us kids are about a split second from losing our shit, and mama is so aggravated that she is ready to K-I-L-L. and then. oh, and then. then dolly starts to turn one way and then the other. each time her lovely bosom would make a scraaaaaaape across the mike and drown out what she was saying. let's just say that missing the last half of the CMA's because you and the farty dog are banished to the yard is worth it sometimes.
    daddy b

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  10. Angella- A rockin' church! That is worth a lifetime of belly laughs. Good story!

    Mel- Too bad we outgrow such silliness, isn't it? Go buy some damn pop rocks!

    Denise- Some sort of weird dairy miracle. Ha! Love it! The stigmata of the nose and milk.
    Already quit weeding. It's just too damn hot.

    gradydoctor- How many children did that snot-wipin' woman raise? Because it sounds to me like she is wired to wipe snot and you only get that way from raising plenty of snotty babies. And you're right. I do love a good tangent.

    DaddyB- Why don't you write? (Which is one of my favorite lines in Dancing With Wolves but that's a tangent.)
    I can just see that whole scene. You feeding the dog your beans, the farts, Dolly's breasts, your mama getting madder and madder and madder and you and the dog finally rolling outside with the joy of it all. I love you so much.

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  11. I once laughed so hard as a kid that milk spewed out my nose and across the table to hit my father. Not a good thing! I wished that I had had better control of my body and suppressed the laugh but it sure was a sight!

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  12. My Buddhist sangha was performing a very solemn ceremony and directly above us in the building a sex workshop was going on with Aretha blasting out the windows and everyone yelling "yeah baby" and "oh yeah" and thumping and stomping.

    My buddy Marilyn caught my eye and I thought my head would explode because we were trying so hard not to laugh. I blew snot out my nose to relieve the pressure. Laughter build-up. Gawd, it was wonderful.

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  13. My mom had bought tickets for a show that my daughters and I thought would be so good. We went and sat excited in our seats for the show to begin. Well the beginning seemed okay but when The Act we really came to see began we all began looking at each other and snickering...at the same time. Thankfully the music was loud but your description was exactly how we all were. It was such a hokey show that we couldn't believe that we ever wanted to see this group. I had to avoid looking at girls as tears were rolling down my cheeks and I thought I would wet my pants with the contained laughter. We left as soon as we could...well before the intermission. We had too!

    Loved this post today Mary!!!

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  14. Oh, Lord, Billy, you got to write more of this shit down.

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  15. And wouldn't you know it? The CMA's are on right now. Just for old times' sake I'm gonna watch them. Maybe i'll be real loud and fart a lot. Especially when kid (fuck you) rock is on.

    Daddy b

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  16. I had that when my dad took my sister and me to a very very high brow concert. It was Ligeti, I think, that they were playing, which is very avant garde music, no tune, all mathematical and stuff, and while the orchestra were tuning their instruments, I turned to my sister and asked her "Do you think they've started yet?" Which had us completely incapacitated for about fifteen minutes, to the greatest annoyance of all the culture buffs around us, and also my father, who still takes us to literary events but no longer to concerts. Which is a shame, because I did enjoy it. (This may be a coincidence.)

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  17. I always want to laugh at funerals. Death and the solemnity of it all make me nervous.

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  18. The only time I remember laughing in church was when the preachers dentures fell out. I was about 12, I think.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.