“I do love my toaster oven though.  That’s what you need down there – heat up the meat and then toast your bun.” ~ SN

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That innocuous statement may seem like the least funny line you could ever imagine, confusing even if you have no context of conversation to be able to attach to that simple phrase.  But last night, that innocent message took a turn down an interesting path and led us on a journey of uncontrollable laughter in the wee hours of the morning.

What started as a discussion about a late-night kitchen raid slowly morphed into something much more amusing after I texted the above line.  It seemed to hover in cyberspace, not realizing it was soon to become the cause of a 45 minute fit of muscle spasms and tears of epic comical proportion.

He broke first.  I didn’t initially see the humour in it but, as he texted it back to me over and over and continued to laugh, I could swear I heard the faint echo of his laughter in my head.  Eventually I began to giggle because thinking of him finding such a sincere comment so funny made that comment start to seem funny to me too.  Soon the two of us had fallen over the brink and we, in our separate houses in the darkness of the early morning, laughed like idiots for almost an hour.

My ribs ached, my stomach muscles felt like they had begun to seize and my sleeve was soaked with tears that would not stop staining my cheeks and my pillowcase.  But at the end of suffering through the side effects of our mutual breakdown, I felt wonderful.  That silly string of words had made us both laugh harder than either of us have laughed in years.  It made us temporarily blind to all of the life outside of that moment, allowing us to truly enjoy an escape from reality that will forever be a memory we will both treasure.

Sometimes the things that aren’t funny really do make us laugh the most.  And if you can share that laughter with the right person, for a brief period of time, the rest of the world ceases to exist.

(image credit)