7/18/05, 4:45-5:05pm: 20-min. Story #1
"Slideshows always make me cry. You know, all of those beautiful moments... and then the music, augh!" She fans her already filling eyes with small, stiff, almost palsied motions. "Just thinking about it gets to me. All of those years..."
Cathie Jo is beautiful. As beautiful as she was in high school. Even these 20 years haven't touched her. She still smiles with accidental glamour and her lips, still full and stained to a natural polish. She is still small and straight. She still doesn't have volume control of her voice. Her words tumble over one another and the last phrase is always surprisingly loud and her nostrils still threaten the beginning of The Laugh. In moments, there is a certain widening. A small flash, and then smooth features.
It looks like she has mastered control over that, sadly. Maybe. Her nostrils tell me that if she forgot herself, just for a second, if something happened she weren't expecting, she would splatter the room with strangled, machine-gun-spray "ha-a-a-a-a's" that would sound like a desperate warning from Flipper. Then, a slow snort would swell, from the bottom of her soul, rising up her throat and tear from her nose. A snort's equivelant of howling at the moon. A terrible fight with a tissue. And finally silence, while Cathie's face would freeze with mute hysterics, only her nostrils dancing in and out and her cheeks blooming bright pink.
The Laugh was best served in a quiet library, rising from behind study carols. "Ha....a....a.....a-a-a-a-a-a.... and then the snort, causing the librarian to look up in alarm and the students rub their throats and swallow, before the sudden silence. Only I, and her contraband pet rat, Guinevere, depositing turds over our mess of homework and notes, could see the nostril dance and the blooming cheeks.
I look at her now. I want her to laugh more than anything. I want all of us, after these 20 years, to come back here and laugh our real laughs. At everything: our ideals in high school; our struggles; failures; our attempts; gains; losses... Life. I want us to circle around the fountain again, clasp hands again- not in perfect hope- not this time. Let's sing a different kind of uniting song. This time let us laugh.
This time let's hold onto each other's hands and laugh crazily because we all went on. Because we remember and don't remember. Because we are human and we are connected. And we have all cried in these last 20 years, lost, won, changed, rearranged. Let's laugh hard because life is short and the divisions we set up between us are ridiculous.
I am bored of this polite twitter. Laugh. For Real. Gimme your guts.
The lights dim. "Oh, here we GO!" (The "go" surprisingly loud.)
Cathie Jo picks through our old classmates and their children to slide down next to her husband. Her boy plunks naturally onto her lap. At the same time, her husbands arm winds up her spine to tickle her ear. I can't hear her laugh from back here, but she crinkles up her neck and tries to cram her shoulder into her ear canal. In turn, she brushes her nails up little Hiller's neck. He squeals. Then he sputters, snorts and convulses in fits of crazy delight.
We all laugh.
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