laugh_until_you_die ovenbird In the basement we crowd onto the couch to watch a movie. Me in the middle, my parents on either side. I’m sharing the electric blanket with my dad. All our feet in wool socks line up on the ottoman. A line in the movie takes us by surprise, the unexpected humour of it breaks us open, and we’re laughing so hard we later have to rewind three minutes because we’ve missed so much dialogue. I’m laughing in the way that forces tears from your eyes. The sound is all locked inside me, hilarity too big to escape from the confines of my throat. We’re all folded in half trying to cope with the glorious pain of something so funny it hurts. And when I recover, I try to remember when I last laughed so hard, and I’m sure it was the last time I was home, with my parents, or with my brother, and it’s one of the things I miss most when I’m not here. It’s not that the rest of my life is devoid of amusement. There’s laughter, the smirking kind, the kind that prompts a genuine smile but not much more, maybe a quick release of air that almost makes a sound. But nothing like this, not the kind of laughing that makes joy feel like a balloon inflated in your chest that you’re trying to heave out with your breath, not the kind that gets so big you can barely breathe and you don’t even care if you die. It’s that kind of laughter—the kind linked to the very fact of our mortality—that binds people. We watch the scene that killed us three more times. And we’re laughing and dying all over again. 260222 what's it to you? who go blather from