the contagion called laughter

Sometimes, my mother just can't help herself. She gets it from her dad, I think - it's that Hansen trait.

We were going grocery shopping, both of us kind of grouchy (her more than me!), and in the parking lot she got out of the car while I fiddled with my iPod for a minute, finding a song I liked, yada yada. She shut her door and locked it with the little thingamabob on her keyring, and the car beeped obediently and I looked up to see the Security light flashing an ominous red. Anyone who has ever taken shelter from the bitter winter cold in the car knows what that means.

If I manually unlock it, I thought vaguely, maybe the alarm won't go off.

Me, being nearly equally dextrous with both hands, tend to use one hand for tasks that don't need two, especially since I'm usually holding a book and keeping my place in it with a finger. So, I reached over right-handedly and manually pulled on the little door-lock tab, then let go to reach for the door handle. Except the door tab flipped back, and the door was locked again.

Here's where my hand works faster than my brain. Long before I registered it, I'd already flipped it unlocked again, not even thinking about it. Again, I reached for the handle, and whoops, locked again. Now a tiny inkling of something wrong tickled in my distracted head - something along the lines of, whoops, didn't pull hard enough...

So this time, giving a miniscule amount of attention to the problem, I pulled the flap a little harder, wiggled it for good measure, and reached (yet again!) for the door handle.

And yeah, you guessed it - it locked again.

Here, at last, I woke up a bit and took a good look at that disagreeable lock. And knew at once what was going on. Huffing a little, I set down my book and reached over with both hands, forcibly holding the lock and pulling open the door, staggering out and already looking...

And there she was, doubled over, tears streaming down a very red face, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. And laughter's contagious, don't you know. Together, we stumbled into the grocery store, laughing like hyenas. I'm sure we garnered many curious stares, and perhaps some indulgent chuckles.

Life. It's good, mostly.