I like to laugh. Who doesn’t?

Way back in junior high school, I realized that making people laugh by making funny jokes and comments really got me up higher on the popularity list. Don’t think I’m shallow: you KNOW how kids can be in jr and sr high. Being popular pretty much meant you were just made fun of way less than the not-so-popular kids.

It took me a while to refine my humor from lame funny comments to true snarkasm: snarky and sarcastic responses. Going over my old blog and some of my new posts, I’m realizing that I’ve come a long way from delving into more serious matters of the heart and of life and typically cover up any and all seriousness with sarcastic and cynical comments.

Not too long ago, I found a poem I’d written for my grandmother. She died in 1984 from liver cancer. I wrote it in 1992 on a day I must have been feeling particularly inspired because it was one of several poems I’d written that day. Rereading it I was surprised at how blunt and honest I was about my feelings and how the loss still impacted me so many years later. I wanted to chide the 18-year old me for being so melodramatic but stopped myself as I realized the importance of the entire emotional spectrum, even if its the kind of emotions that result in people saying you are dramatic or over emotional.

Oddly enough, my ten year old daughter is just that: her picture is actually in the dictionary next to the words “drama queen.” How many times have I scolded her for being “too dramatic” or “overly emotional” about something? Too many times I’m starting to think. Granted, all prepubescent girls (and boys!) experience their emotions much more intensely than we do. But my daughter… well she feels things with her whole heart. When a close friend of the family died, she cried as we expected (I did too) but she took things a step farther: she lamented and imagined that perhaps in a dream she could say goodbye to this person, and she recounted to me how she would do so. She was very upset about the fact that she had seen our friend only days before his sudden death but didn’t run up to him to get a hug like she usually would have.

I tried to be matter-of-fact with her, not so much to stop her from being over dramatic, but mostly because I wanted to shorten the grieving process for her. So guess what I did? I made a joke. I said if our friend saw her crying so much and being so sad, he’d likely give her a noogie and tell her to move on with life.

In reality, we both grieved just as much but with different expressions: I made the jokes and tried to lighten the mood and kept my emotions in check, she cried and shared her feelings with anyone willing to listen. She even wrote our friend’s wife a beautiful letter declaring her undying love for our friend and how he would never be forgotten.

Sweet girl. She reminds me of Montgomery’s Anne Shirley.

So what’s my point? Well, I guess I’m going to have to allow the sentimental, emotional (dare I say girly?)  part of me to come out and write a little bit once in a while.  I may not be sending out any poems any time soon, but I will find some time to share with you a bit of what I’ve experienced in life.

But I guarantee I’ll STILL find a way to sneak some sarcasm in there. Seriously.