What I learned from the laugh

Why is all that important? Why does that story of Ward saying that and Dave letting that laugh out matter to me? Because when Dave let that little laugh out, it showed that he believed all those ridiculous stories I had told for the last four years. That was cool. I admit some of those stories, I would not believe if I was not there myself. No matter who I play with or who is looking at the cards, every single time, there is a handful of cards that get picked out every time that everyone asks about unless that were actually present for that event.

Again why does this matter? Because have you ever noticed that after a while you remember things but even your memories of the events seem to mellow out. My friend, TJ, has told people the story of how I crashed his prom so many times it’s lost its outrageousness. Don’t get me wrong T, I’m not saying stop. I’m just as proud of it today as I was then and I still love having been at your prom very much. I love the story every time you tell it. It also makes me smile that it meant enough to you that you tell it to people. It’s just my mom found an old pack of pictures from when we always carried a disposable camera with us everywhere we went and they surprised me.

We used to go through disposable cameras like water. It was before every teen had a cellphone, let alone a cell that could take pictures! We always had the camera and my video camera.

For those of you who were there it was the day TJ borrowed Matt’s baseball hat, and my beloved trench coat and walked around impersonating Silent Bob. (And we used someone’s eye liner for the beard.) For those of you who were not there I am sure you are figuring it out. I remembered this day. I knew this story pretty well. It was the other things going on in the pictures. The subplot of the pictures that I truly found amazing. I knew we were trouble makers but really! There was just pure ridiculousness going on behind this masquerade in December.

My mom and dad were both still sitting in the room with me as I looked at these pictures. I found myself pulling the pictures close. (Like there isn’t a statute of limitations on this stuff!) As I looked at these pictures the first time in most likely a decade, which were 99% of me and TJ, I realized I didn’t know the two kids in the pictures anymore.

At least that’s how I felt the first time I looked through them anyway. The first time I looked at them I thought I didn’t recognize either of us. I didn’t recognize the kids who were loitering in a Mickey D’s for the past few hours. The real life stoner was smoking a cigarette and impersonating one of the most famous stoners after Cheetch and Chong. The girl in pictures had short hair. She had lost her hair after she had cut it off in a fit of rage which she was prone to having at the time because that girl had a nasty temper. At first glance those are the things I noticed about them. I saw their faults at first.

But for some reason I couldn’t put those pictures down. I just kept looking at them and looking at them. When I looked at the pictures the other friends in the photos I saw seeing the same things, I was seeing the negative aspects of them.

I showed them to my boyfriend. I don’t know why, he wasn’t a member of the group. Since our group was together for years he asked how I knew these pictures were ten years old. And was even about to pin point them to the exact month. I showed him little things like garland in the background at the mall and my hair length. But when I realized they were taken in December of 2004, I looked at the photo that had the guy who is getting married on the 27^th in it. This picture was taken six months before he met the women who was going to be his wife.

He wasn’t going to meet her for another six months. Then they would spend nine years together and continue on after that in marriage. I still had the picture, but more importantly, I still had the friendship.