Family, Stupid People, and Laughing (At Yourself)

Sunday, April 28, 2013

"Laughter is great medicine!" -Unknown

I love my family. They're amazing. We're amazing. We're funny, we're crazy, we love each other, and we're weird. Really weird.

Sometimes, I forget how weird we are. I forget that not everyone eats dinner together every evening. I forget that not everyone reads bedtime stories with their daddy at age 14. I forget that some in some families, people fight over the last chicken leg and not the last brussel sprout. (True story!) I forget that not everyone has five children, and that five children isn't a small family.

(At one point in time, I really did think we had a small family. After spending some time with our cousins, who have seven children, and some other friends, who have six, I was under the impression we had a small family. Then my dad pointed out that most families only have one or two children. And that we were considered "big" when we had three kids...)

(Speaking of being a weird family, I don't understand why most people seem to think that the "perfect" family is a boy and a girl. Not only does that seem like a small family to me, but that also leaves you with two kids who don't have a play-mate in their family of the same gender. That seems sad. I couldn't even imagine growing up without my older sister to play with.)

One of my favorite parts of the day is dinner with my family. Dinner, for us, is a really crazy deal. And, apparently, one of our biggest eccentricities.

My older sister and I go over to this one particular friend's house quite a bit, and have been for a long time. We've eaten a countless number of dinners at their house, and we always laugh. A lot. It wasn't until recently that I realized something- we bring the laughter to them. I had always been under the impression that our friends always had dinner like that. I mean, it was just like our dinner! Why would it be any different elsewhere? Evidently, dinner at their house is a lot quieter when we're not there.

I can't even begin to imagine what a boring time dinner must be in houses where talking at the table is discouraged!

When the table gets too quiet at our house, something's wrong. And I usually try to fix it. (The silence, I mean. Not the problem. There's very little I can do about the kind of stuff that makes the dinner table go quiet.)

Today was just a normal dinner (eerr... lunch, I mean.) except for the fact that it was at 5 o'clock in the evening... That's right! We were eating lunch/dinner at 5 pm. That's really late for lunch, and really early for dinner. (At least in our house.) Lunch is usually closer to 1 or 2, and dinner is usually closer to 8 or 9. Welcome to my world.

Anyway, we were just not-so-calmy eating lunch/dinner, and talking more than normal on account of the fact that I've been gone all weekend. I really don't remember what we were talking about, except that it had to do with my blog. My older sister, gesturing at me, said, "Speaking of stupid people..." I couldn't believe what she had just implied!

Just kidding. I know her too well to think she would, in all seriousness, imply I was stupid. She'd really been referencing my post about stupid people (Click here if you haven't read this post already), but it looked like she was implying I was stupid. (Much to her own chagrin.) Needless to say, we had a great laugh about that!

Sometimes though, we hear something like that and don't laugh. Sometimes, we let it get to us. Maybe if we all laughed at ourselves a little more, we wouldn't get hurt by it so much.

Do we really take ourselves so seriously that we can't find it in ourselves to just... laugh at ourselves? Are we really all that?

I'm sure you've heard this before. (Maybe a lot!) But have you really tried it lately? Have you laughed at yourself this week? Have you tried just... letting it go?

Before someone mentions it, I'm not saying you should put yourself down all the time. That's not what I mean at all! Life is hard enough without making it harder by being mean to yourself. But life is also hard enough without letting every stupid comment by every stupid person (and we've already determined that there are a lot of stupid people out there!) tear you down.

So next time someone says something stupid, turn it on its head. Laugh! Laugh in the face of stupid comments. Laugh at your own silliness, quirks, and awesomeness. Laugh at your irrational fear of bugs. Laugh at being spacey. Laugh at your corniness, your shyness, or even your own laughter. Just... laugh! Laugh like you haven't a care in the world.

Who knows? Maybe those "cares" aren't as big as they seem...