Laughter in the Time of Danger...

So I've been noting some of the differences between kids and adults (even if the kids swear I'm not an adult yet myself, and I usually have to agree). One thing I've noticed is that by the time you're an adult, you're expected to have moved past laughing at slapstick comedy and people falling down. You're supposed to make sure someone who gets hurt is okay before you laugh hesitantly and delicately "with" him, and then quickly change the subject. Kids, however, get to laugh guilt-free at all the things we adults wish we could publicly laugh at: someone with weird eyebrows, toilet paper on the shoe, the fake-blonde woman who trips down the stairs in the mall...

This all comes to mind because the other night, it was about two o'clock in the morning, and I was in a really bad mood. The kids couldn't fall asleep and kept keeping me up, too and a lot of boring adult crap had happened earlier that day so I just wanted the day to be over. The kids and I had been camping out in the den on the couches, but since they were giggling, I went to sleep on the couch in the living room, adjacent to the den. It was one of those moments when I had just relaxed enough to start having those crazy half-awake/half-asleep thoughts and was beginning to drift off when, out of nowhere, the kids' black cat Shadow jumps from the floor onto my arm, then onto my neck, digging its claws into me, then proceeds to jump over the back of the couch and haul ass into another room. In my head I was like: You motherf****** cat! You just ripped out my f****** jugular vein! After all those times I've refilled your motherf****** cat bowl! See if I ever do that again you damn cat!!!

Of course, I can't yell out those things anymore, so I just yelled, "You ... stupid (the only acceptable word I could find) cat!" And the kids came over to see what I was yelling about and why I was sitting up. "Your cat just tried to kill me..." They both nodded and didn't say anything, turning their faces away from me so I couldn't see they were starting to laugh and trying to hide it by biting their lips. I huffed and went to sleep in Layne's room (after examining my scratches to determine it looks not only like I am a self-mutilator, but that Jack the Ripper got a hold of me as well). As I heard the kids laughing through the wall, I had to laugh, too because it was pretty funny. Something about a cat named Shadow leaping onto my neck in the middle of the night and then tearing down the hall not to be seen again, all for no apparent reason, has to make me laugh. And that's what I get for my bad moods anyway. One day when I have some time I'm going to write a kids' story with a character in it who is me when I'm in a bad mood... she's going to be like the Trunchbull. I guess I'm not that bad, but I always feel guilty when I'm not completely understanding with kids. They will have that look in their eye that says, How can you yell at us when you are one of us? You know you want to eat this cake before dinner, too!


And I am reminded of a time completely unrelated to all of this, when my older brother and sister planted a banana peel in the hall, waiting for me to walk by and trip on it. I was probably eleven or something, still in that hazy daze that lasted until I was about fourteen, when I would trip over everything because I hadn't learned to balance the crazy dreaming world in my head with the harsh reality of sharp objects in the material world. There was a joke that I once tripped over a penny. Anyway. I was walking along, probably thinking of this "really cool" book on aliens or something, when I slipped on something, my feet flew out from under me, and the back of my head hit the floor. I got up from my near-concussion and saw that I was lying near... a banana peel. Even a spacey girl like myself had to rub her head and think, WTF? Did I really just slip on a banana peel? Where did that even come from? ---NOTE: I am laughing really hard by myself right now because I am remembering how weirded out I was by the fact that there was a banana peel lying in the middle of the hallway--- Before I could think too long about it, my brother and sister came out from behind their hiding place, laughing hysterically. And begging me not to tell our parents.


That was also pretty funny. When you think, or don't think, about it.