Laughter

I laughed three times over the past 6 months. Pretty bad when you can count the times but I can because they were rare, obviously, few and far between. Actually I guess that's an improvement because months ago was the first time I had laughed since Kevin disappeared. I bring this up because Kevin had a neat sense of humor, I think. We're all individual but coming from the same family we all had a similar sense of humor and, or, I might have had something to do with forming his, or at least I really appreciated his humor anyway. Once again I have to say that being his mother I only experienced Kevin's humor and Kevin in a mother- son relationship so my views and opinions are slanted. We all tended to be sarcastic, I think. Over the years I found that one has to be carefull with sarcasm, especially with children because they don't understand it. I was very careful not to be sarcastic with Terry, Brian, and Kevin, but Brian and Kevin tended to express sarcasm in their humor at an early age. But that's something different and I guess I think more of Kevin's quick wit and dry sense of humor. I was thinking of this this morning as I was driving to the library. I could see myself being a Gracey Allen to Kevin's George Burns if I remember those two correctly. Kevin was sort of a straight man and would just say these things very straight faced and with subtle timing. I on the other hand have a dumb-blonde sense of humor bordering on slapstick at times. That's the way I saw it. But as silly as my humor was I could make Kevin laugh and, of course, he made me laugh too. He laughed and shook his head and rolled his eyes, sort of thing, but he still laughed. At times he used humor as a cover too, something I learned to do rather late in life. He would always have a quick, smart-alec or sarcastic reply if you were getting on him for something he shouldn't be doing or something he should be doing.

One thing comes to mind very frequently, as I drive for a living, and so am on the roads more than most people. No one wants to be behind a bus so the name of the game is "beat the bus". On occasion I have to laugh to myself when I get behind someone I don't want to be behind. I call them pokes, short for slowpokes. One day I was telling Kevin about the poke I was behind that morning and he said, "oh, there's more than one on the road?" The implication being that I'm the only poke on the road, of course. Well, so special to me and it was so funny at the time and a special memory.

Have you ever seen pizza in a bag? On my break at Southridge Mall I was eyeing the pizza at the Sbarro concession and decided to buy it. I couldn't take a big box on the bus so I just asked them to stack it and put it in a plastic bag. They were a little mortified but I told them "Just put it in the Bag!" They did, and my fellow driver and I laughed all the way back to the bus. Pizza in a bag! Kevin would have laughed. At me or with me I'm not sure but I would have loved to share this with him as I would have done the next day or so.

My second outburst of laughter was over a bag of pizza, also, but with a different co-worker a couple of weeks later. Thirdly, I was just wound up one morning, thinking of my anti-depression tape, so half dancing,half jumping around, giggling. Of course that ended quickly as I had to start my morning run!

Humor was important to Kevin and we laughed together many times. I can still hear his laughter.