Day 99: Tickling the Funny Bone

I can't wait to see the movie "Julie and Julia". I read the book a year or two ago. Don't ask me to recount any of the details (afterall, I'm sitting on my brain), but I do remember that I loved it. I'm currently reading Julia Child's My Life in France. I love the way she expresses herself, her joie de vivre. I refuse to see the movie until I finish the book though, so I'm going to have to get cracking. Vite, vite!

I used to watch "The French Chef" on tv with my mom. She was kind of a quiet woman -- my dad did most of the laughing for the two of them -- but man, when she she laughed she LAUGHED. And Julia Child tickled her funny bone (by the way, Funny Bones are scrumpdillyicious snack food cakes, sort of like Ring Dings but with peanut butter inside -- bon appetit!). I cherished those moments sitting with her in front of the big console tv, tears running down her face while Julia, talking in her whoopsie daisy voice and breathing hard, was making a croquette. I laughed along, too, but mostly I was fascinated by my quaking mother.

I also remember my mom laughing while watching The Beatles perform on "Ed Sullivan". I believe it was bobblehead Ringo on the drums that really did her in. And there was the time at the family reunion when my mom and my aunt got laughing uncontrollably over some family tale: it either had to do with my mom getting caught with a boy in the backseat of his car or with their family's euphemisms for pee and poop. The two Simpson girls laughed so hard they probably wettled or gungled in their pants!

You know the "I Love to Laugh" scene in "Mary Poppins"? Uncle Albert's laughter causes him to float up to the ceiling, where he's soon joined by zero gravity Bert and the children. That was the most magical, fantastical thing my five-year-old self had ever seen, even better than Bert and Mary and the children jumping through the chalk drawing on the sidewalk, and I dreamed of doing the same.

Anyway, I hope I grow older like Julia Child, slightly out of breath and amused by life, and like my mom, laughing so hard that I float right up to the ceiling. That would be practically perfect.