I Simply Must Stop Laughing!

Look at these lines on my face! They only show up when I'm happy.

I have to stop laughing immediately. Quickly, someone please remind me of what my life was like when I was married and the kids were growing up - No, thanks again - I'll take the smiles, the lines, the peace....well, there isn't all that much peace when you share a little place with two teenage girls who are either kissing or killing each other every minute of the day.

Presently they are happy with each other. That could change the second a boy walks into the club they're dancing in and says hi to just one of them. Cats don't sound off as loudly as my girls when they disagree - and you've heard cats going at it.

The thing about laughing and getting all wrinkly and line-infested is that each one of my lines could probably stand up and tell a story about how they came to rest so securely in my face. I taught in the hood for five years - I'm surprised my hair isn't gray, my teeth punched out, and the lines even deeper - but not from laughing. I cried as often as I grinned when I taught, believe me. Maybe those lines could tell you something about working cases for Mr. Moler and developing my own unique perspective of the laws of my state while I simultaneously upheld them myself to see them being abused in court when it came time to hold the judge accountable. Here I was working for a lawyer that was upstanding every single time, but the judge in my custody case obviously didn't learn the same law(s) that Mr. Moler practiced - she changed them at her own will and whim - the lines from those events run sideways across the top of my head I think....maybe in time they'll be covered by the more dominate and more satisfying humor huggers that fine and find me on a yearly basis. I do pray they do.

My girls are all but grown now - years of work, pushing, pulling, dragging, kicking, clawing, and screaming at the air to get that accomplished. To tell the truth, I use a great deal of those experiences in my comedy routines because parents of teens understand me. From stage I see a mom reach over and squeeze the hand of her eye-rolling 15 year old daughter, and I know she knows what I know. The daughter gets it too, but she's not going to let mom see her grin - later in the room on the phone with her friend the relative story gets told in giggles and screeching over cells and soda. ("She was soooo talking about me, I know it.")

Well - ENOUGH with the craters showing up on my face already, go to my knees or something, at least I can bend them and make them look like they're suppose to go away - from time to time I stand in front of the mirror and pull my cheekbones up, or my forehead - just to see what I would look like with a flatter more youthful face - Like Laura...and I smile again. Defeating the purpose, but satisfying the heart.