Inside jokes and inside responses.

Do you remember that sense of absolute hilarity that you often felt as a younger person?  That feeling of laughing so hard you might just stop breathing?

There are moments I can distinctly recall; and the thought of them brings that strange grin to my face, and I can feel, ever so slightly, that hilarity must behind my face, daring me to look away for just one minute so that it can burst forth and remind me that such things are possible.

If I'm alone, I'll let some of the laughter slip.  But if I'm not alone, I find that it's far too difficult to explain, so I let it go.

But I treasure it like the last bite of that brownie pie, consumed in a corner table of that quiet little bar in KY.

"Big hair; Little Richard."

That one gets me, every time.

It was a conversation in a small house a long time ago; those conversations always seemed to get away from us, somehow....and the results of that freedom was usually....well.....fun-filled.

I don't get those conversations anymore.  And I can satisfy myself, 23 hours of a day, that I had my fill and it was a good run, and I have the memory of those laughter filled evenings, and that's good enough.

But in that one hour......that one hour when I let the Wild Rumpus Start......I get very angry that I no longer have that outlet, and the alleged reasons behind it.

It's often called, in those times, as the feeling of the loss of nameless things.  And if I were less cynical, and less used to disappointment, I assume I could weep.  But I do not.

I dream.

And wait for that next hour to come.

I have replaced Orwell's Two Minutes Hate with a Lost Hour of Laughter.