My Good Laugh

I had a good laugh today -- the first in really a long time, and I forgot how good your body feels after laughing.

I had ordered groceries on line and they are always delivered by one of a group of young Sudanese men who are uniformly polite and appreciative of a tip. Today the fellow put the bags on the kitchen floor as I directed and I asked him if there was a second trip -- whether there were more bags outside because it didn't look like enough.

He said no, that was it, and I looked at this measly collection of grocery bags and asked in this pleading voice, "How can this be $127 worth of groceries?" He started to laugh, and I hammed it up saying, "It's impossible, you've hidden the rest of my groceries. Go find them!"

He continued to laugh and had this lilting accent, almost like the islands, like Jamaica, and kept saying, "I'm so sorry, Miss... Oh Miss, I know how you feel." I continued to ham it up, which wasn't too hard because I really did look at these bags and marvel at how little there was -- and it's not like I had a bag full of filet mignons and lobster tails.

We were both laughing hard, and when he left, and I was putting away the groceries (and wondering how a damn jar of pickles could cost $4 and a box of crackers nearly $5 and lemons are a dollar a piece) I realized I was smiling and felt differently. I don't remember the chemcials that are released when we laugh (and when we cry, too), but it felt good to have a good old-fashioned belly laugh.