Maybe You Had to Be There: No. 1

I love to laugh.  I really do.  I mean it!  I love it.  And I love making people laugh.  It’s like a drug to me.  I’ve never used cocaine or heroin or uppers or goofballs or, Jesus – I’m so uncool…I’ll just say “illicit drugs”….but to me I equate enduring gut-busting laughter, or causing it, with that kind of high.  Any of you hard-core drug users out there might disagree with me but you can’t prove me wrong so, piss off.

It’s been a while since I’ve laughed so hard that I felt like I couldn’t breathe and like I was going to pass out, and I really need a fix.

So I started compiling in my head the things that I can remember laughing at the hardest in my long, illustrious life.  This is one of them:

College.  1988?  Probably Midnight.  Eating at “The Junction” with the usual suspects… a bunch of dirt-poor, over-worked, never-paid Theatre students.  This was “our place”.  We OWNED that place.  You could write a check there for a buck-fifty.  ‘nough said.

So I’m eating a taco salad (not their signature dish, but it cost like $ .12 – so it was pretty popular).  I start choking and gasping for air.  My friend “Sue” (I’m protecting her identity, from what I don’t know…but she’s the same friend with whom I shared Super Mario life-lessons) is sitting to my left eating her who-knows-what.

I’m gagging and can’t catch my breath.  Other friends start to notice and become passively concerned, doling out the intermittent, obligatory “are-you-okays”.  Sue doesn’t flinch and continues eating and I was pissed she wasn’t trying to help me.  She was, after all, the only one there who had taken Nursing courses and was, I assumed, my best chance at survival.

I dramatically, natch, grab my throat, look directly at Sue and sputter out the word “HEIMLICH!” in my raspy, nearly-deadness. She. Does. Nothing.

Someone from across the table leans over and smacks me on the back in a pretty half-assed sort of way, rolling their eyes the whole time.  That pissed me off too.  I cough and the offending piece of something dislodges in my throat.  I breathe hard and drink some water, slamming the glass down with a flourish.

Once I compose myself I turn to Sue, and with arms flailing in their ridiculous Italianness, yell…

“What the FUCK!?  You couldn’t HELP ME??!!  I said Heimlich!!!”

Without looking up and continuing her meal she said……

“If you can say it, you don’t need it.”