March 25, 2001

I have a love/hate relationship with my laugh. I mean, it gets me recognition and you know, you can't hate to laugh, but it's the most annoying thing that has ever come out of a human mouth. It will prevent me from becoming president, mark my words.

It's not just a "ha" or a "hee" or even a "ho"- the only thing that redeems it is that it doesn't include a snort of any kind. It's loud and piercing, and comes at the most inopportune moments. It's incredibly obvious also, so I can never ever hide it. It comes in different stages: a giggle that erupts into an all-out guffaw that leads to a series of "hee"-ish sounds that, if whatever I'm laughing at is really funny, eventually disintegrates into uncontrollable shaking and an inability to breath. And it always ends in a cough and a sigh. Luckily, nothing has been funny enough to get to the non-breathing stage since Tony punched Bob in the face in eighth grade. I've been able to control myself since then. I find that taking time to breath during the "hee's" makes me start over with the giggling again, which is actually somewhat of a plus.

You're thinking I'm insane- I know you are. Don't deny it (what am I going to do? I'm all the way over here). Because no one is supposed to think this much about their laugh, right? I've even gotten to the point of trying to change it or stop it- halfheartedly, of course, but that's still a step that people don't usually make. I would blame the countless people who try to imitate my laugh constantly, but even I notice it. It just happens to stick out, especially at the movies during a joke that has completely flown right over the heads of every other audience member (and tonight, no one was understanding the genius that is Jason Lee).

My half-assed new laugh is three deep-throated, definitive "Ha's", with the third one distinctly separated from the first two to give it that Shatneresque dramatic pause. It usually dissolves into my usual series of noises, though. I suppose that was somewhat of the point.

Then again, my laugh is fun. It's nice for the same reasons every laugh is nice, plus it's pretty contagious. Even if what I'm laughing at isn't funny to anyone else, I can usually get the people around me to start into their own normal laughs just by getting to the guffaw stage. And my mother asserts that she doesn't notice anything odd about my laugh. Plus, it gets me noticed by people who otherwise wouldn't give me a second thought. And it's mine- everyone knows me by the sound of my laugh.

To segue badly, guess what happened to me after I spent two hours laughing ever so noticeably in the middle of a crowded theater? Really noticeably, because I was in between two of the funnier people to go to movies with, so it was rather constant giggling through the previews and the already mentioned genius Jason Lee jokes. To get on with it, I was standing outside the bathroom with one of my friends, waiting for two other friends so we could go home. I'm still happy, because my laughter is also contagious to myself, so I'm smiling. Suddenly, I make eye contact with this guy (who resembles the Diago character from that awful sitcom "Jesse"), and he starts laughing at me. I stare fixedly at my friend as he joins this other guy and continues to laugh. When one of my friends returns from the bathroom, she immediately notices the odd look on our faces, so we all scurry back into the bathroom, followed by the laughs and odd throaty noises coming from both the weird men. I'm somewhat convinced that the man came from the same movie as me, and happened to pick me out as I walked, still laughing, out of the theater. I highly doubt the fake "ha's" would have inspired this same interaction.

In other news, life is surprisingly fantabulous, despite the workload and the stress and the anger and the worry. I am a second-semester senior whose class rank is pretty much locked in and who really doesn't need to worry about grades anymore. The only true academic worry comes in the form of the four AP Exams scheduled for mid-May, which I'm okay with right now. In reality, I'm on a spring break that will consist of my taking notes on three chapters of government and three chapters of chemistry, reading Catch-22, doing an economics paper on the airlines industry, writing a German essay and reading many German newspaper articles, applying for a few scholarships, trying to figure out the damn hammer and pick technique on my banjo, catching up on my voice lesson repertoire, returning to work at the cash office, finally learning how to drive, cleaning my room (which would sound easy, if only it had been done in the past two months), and . . . possibly eating and sleeping. I don't know, we'll see. But I'm still quite positive, because I'm trying to connect with my eight year old nerd- the one who brought home all her books during a weekend when my teachers were threatening to strike and worked almost a whole chapter ahead in my math class. That kind of pointless effort has still got to be in me somewhere, doesn't it?

I'm 18! I can vote on April 3 in my village's local election. It's Republicans vs. Republicans, which I think will do wonders for my argument that I truly am nonpartisan (I would like Republicans, if they only agreed with some of my political beliefs more often). it's actually quite exciting- I'm considering waking up really early so I can get to the polls before I go to school and have my stub to show off to all my younger politically-conscious friends. I'm quite the dork.

College is causing much too much anxiety right now. I don't hear from my top choice until April 10, or sometime around then. It was okay to say it without causing grief when that date was two months away. Now it's not so long, and I'm having nightmares. Erin's waiting to hear from her dream school too, and my first nightmare consisted of both of us receiving our rejection letters and bawling hysterically. The second dream was just me with a packet from my school, filled with papers that said everything but whether or not I was accepted. I didn't sob in that one though, so my subconscious has become somewhat more optimistic. It's just that it would suck so terribly if Erin and I don't get in to our respective schools. We're very dramatic people, and we have a tendency to get our hopes up and imagine life after our dreams are fulfilled; it would crush us. Young, intelligent people don't deserve to be crushed like that.

Let's get off that subject. Much too scary to consider. I'll leave you with a fragment from Semisonic's exciting new release, "All About Chemistry." The song is Who's Stopping You?."We're speaking in tongues, Both of us dumbfounded, Our brains have been impounded by our hearts . . Life is so uncertain, Look at all the hurting that we've done., You said you had somebody better to become. . .Who's stopping you? Who's stopping you? . . . We're wasting our time, Watching our old reruns, Hoping for the good one that never comes . . . You said it beats working on the emptiness that's lurking inside your head, Step into the light my friend . . . Who's stopping you? . . I thought you had somebody better to become...."