Another kind of Valentine

"Oh, you girls. . ."

What does it mean when, at our age, my friend's mother admonishes our giggles the same way she would have--did--when we were barely out of our teens? I'm not sure what it says about my emotional maturity, but I love what it says about the friendship I value most.

I never was able to keep a straight face, and somewhere along the way, I stopped trying. Life's too short--and too strange, too difficult, too messy, and too good, too-- not to laugh at what strikes me funny, even if no one else gets the joke, even if the cool kids are giving me that sideways glance that says, "what's her problem?"

Trust me, uptight, appearance-obsessed, cool kids of the grown-up world, there is no problem. In my life, there is always, always someone else who gets the joke-- or who will, if nothing else, laugh at my inevitably botched re-telling of it. And though that does describe everyone who's close to me--if we don't laugh together, we're surely not even casual friends--there's one person with whom I've collapsed in helpless laughter more than any other, and this post is for her.

Is there more to our friendship than a shared sense of humor? Well, duh, as we're still likely to say. Of course there is. But each time I try to catch my breath and regain my composure so I can finish my meal or my conversation, and each time I must studiously avoid eye contact with her so I don't lose it entirely in a quiet crowd, I notice that too many people in the world are not having nearly as much fun, and I know that I'm lucky to have something that not everyone does.

If I claimed that the key to this endless stream of laughter was the intimacy of thousands of shared experiences and nearly twenty years of in-jokes , my premise wouldn't be questioned, but it wouldn't be entirely true. Sure, we've had a laugh for all occasions for a long time now, but we've been giggling like easily amused schoolgirls since we actually were school-or at least college--girls who didn't know each other that well at all. We laughed so much through the writing of the otherwise hateful group research paper that fate assigned us that I was determined to stay her friend long after the final draft was typed. One of the defining relationships of my life, and I owe it all to inappropriate giddiness in the computer lab. Life is, indeed, unpredictable.

To be all Valentine's Day about it, I'm not sure there really is any explaining the hetero girlfriend equivalent of love at first sight. I do know, however, that we sure have always laughed more than most people do, and we surely always will. For that certainty, and that laughter, and for that singular, enduring, more-than-a-friendship, I will always be grateful.