It's the Giggling

Yesterday, I was listening to NPR and they reported on the death of John Callahan, a man as famous for being politically incorrect as for anything else. John was a quadriplegic and his “everything is fair game” attitude got his cartoons published in the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. (My personal favorite showed a “Feminist Book Store” and the sign read, “There is no Humor Section.” I just think that’s funny.) Anyway, Gary Larson (The Far Side) was talking about his friend and fellow cartoonist and he said he really felt the two of them were kindred spirits. Then he said something that really resonated with me. He said, basically, “think about the times in your life when you laughed the hardest – literally with your sides splitting and tears running down your face. Sometimes you can laugh that hard with a group of people, but usually, you’ll find that if you’re laughing that hard, it’s during a moment that you’re sharing with just one other person.”

I think there’s a lot of truth to that. There are plenty of things in life that the general public won’t laugh with us about – gross, morbid, nonsensical or disturbing things - and you have to have that one other person who just gets it (whatever “it” might be). It’s refreshing to have a person who will laugh with you when everyone else would be crying (or vomiting, as the case may be, or just looking puzzled or worse, just looking away).

I have written here a lot about why I love “The 3 Day.” I love the way it lifts and inspires us and the way it benefits countless people while making us better individuals in the process. I love the way it represents all that is benevolent and productive about a “community,” whether that be a physical place or just a social fabric; we all learn from it and are elevated by it.

But now I think the thing I love most about The 3 Day is just the giggling. We manage to laugh a lot on the walks in spite of however hot we are, or wet, or blistered, or sore, or sunburned, or sweaty, or stinky. . . . . My tent-mate/team-mate/bestest-cousin-buddy and I find a lot of humor along the way. Sometimes we’re just laughing at what a hideous spectacle we’ve become. And there aren’t a lot of people we’d share that with.

This past Saturday evening in Boston, we walkers had been through a lot. We were about 43 miles in – having walked almost 22 that day and the conditions had been a little extreme. The heat was taking a toll on everyone and it had been unbearably humid as well. There had been fog, rain, blistering sun and boiling hot pavement with a lot of concrete sidewalks thrown in which are tough on your knees and shins. After dinner, everyone really just seemed to want to get some sleep.

I was in my tent with the screen open for ventilation, tending to my feet, when the two ladies staying diagonally across from us walked down the lane between the rows of jerry-rigged, tarped and trash-bagged tents. They could hear the horrendous snoring before they got all the way down the aisle and I watched as they realized it was coming from directly behind their tent. One of them said she didn’t think her ear-plugs could drown that out. They debated for a bit and ultimately decided to relocate their tent to the end of the row. I felt so bad for them I wanted to cry. Such a long day! Now probably all they wanted was to rest and they couldn’t. Here they were, moving their wet, smelly, disorganized stuff in near-darkness on feet that didn’t really want to take another step. To save time, they opted to clear out the heaviest stuff and then pick up the whole tent, some stuff still inside, and carry it to the new spot. Needless to say, the tent was unwieldy and they were struggling. I decided to see if they wanted any help; maybe I could lend a hand to these poor ladies who seemed to be in such a pickle.

When I stuck my head out, I could see that their tent had folded itself together in a way that made it look more two-dimensional than three and the stuff they left inside had congregated in the middle and was causing the bottom to drag. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to fix the drag-bulge while still supporting the sides. What a mess. The ladies themselves were less easily discerned. That’s because they were doubled over behind the tent laughing. It was that awesome kind of silent, no-longer-breathing laugh that you fall into when you’ve gone completely goofy. I love that laugh. That laugh is what The 3-Day is all about. Blistered feet met with a grin. Collapsed tent met with fits of laughter. Yup. That’s why we keep signing up. Of course Everyone Deserves a Lifetime. And of course we’re going to create a World Without Breast Cancer. But the other thing that brings us back year after year is just the giggling.

I got back into my tent. The ladies clearly didn’t need me. Nope – those two kindred spirits had each other.