Laughing

I've lost count of the amount of times with my friends that I have just totally lost it with laughter. When I have been in physical pain from the hilairty that my peers and I can conjure up together. The innumerable times I've caught the eye of someone who's spotted exactly what I've just spotted. The times the upper sixth at school take it upon themselves to rabidly and hilariously pretend to molest some of the boys in my year. It seems to me that being a teenager is a time when, despite exams, the opposite sex and all that other meaningless rubbish, you spend absurd amounts of time joking, pissing around and, as a result, laughing until urination is a probability.

And a worrying thought has gripped me. Is that going to stop soon?

I'm in Year 12, about to take my AS exams. This time next year, I'll be taking my A2 exams, to get into University. If I get in, I'm sure several years of loitering and inconvenient student jokery will ensue. But then what after that? Work, marriage, kids, piles, contracts, modems, moving vans, redecorating, new faces, loss of contact. Is the painfully incredible laughter I experience nearly every day with my friends going to vanish? Is time going to slowly erode the hilarity?

I'm scared of few things. The classics obviously- losing loved ones etc, chickens. but I suppose I'm also scared of waking up one day when I'm older and thinking "I haven't laughed til my sides hurt and I was crying like a baby with a rash since I was 17".

Think about it. How often do you see adults laughing as much as you probably do in a school day, or when you hang out with your friends? I don't know if it's anything to do with maturity. Surely stuff doesn't get less funny as you get older?

I want to laugh. I love the times I get to laugh. I love the things I laugh about. The in-jokes, the observances, the scenarios, all of it. And I'm going to try my damn hardest, God willing, to keep laughing. I want to keep in contact with the people who I know and love so much that we can cackle to embarrassment. Laughter is an incomprehensibly wonderful and bizarrely designed blessing from God. I want to make sure I hold onto it and get the best ride out of the thing I can. I want my lungs to be shredded, my sides to be split open like volcanic eruptions and my cheeks to be reddened and drowned with tears- all from laughter! And I hope you'll join me in making sure that we grow up gibbering, guffawing, joking, mirthful, giddy wrecks of joy!