Wine, Sneeze and Crack-ups

I love red, red wine. The way it compliments a fine meal, the way it goes with potato chips, the way it makes salad taste that much better. However, when you spill the wine, it likes to make its mark.
Unfortunately, wine seems to have a tendency to jump out of my glass and land on inappropriate places—wall, laptop, pocketbook, etc.

 

Let me explain the pocketbook incident. I was at a friend’s demonstration party. You know those in-home parties where a pleasant lady gives a talk about a product she is selling and is ever so polite and patient with the gathering of women who, yes, will probably purchase some of her wares, but are very busy chewing, laughing and drinking wine with the other attendees.

 

I had put down my glass on a coffee table and was standing next to a co-worker when we heard it. Our friend’s mom let out a big, achoooo—a sneeze with such force that it propelled her backward onto the coffee table and you guessed it, didn’t you…right into my glass of wine which tipped over and gushed into my new pocketbook which was right under the table.

 

Now while the loss of my new carrier should have saddened me, the utter drama of the sneeze and the scene that followed was just too ticklish for me to bear. The mom was pretty flustered but managed to laugh at herself. Unfortunately, my friend next to me has the same laugh until you cry sense of humor that I do and I saw her smile begin. Well, that’s all it took for me to start. Now, we didn’t want to hurt the mom’s feelings, she was a bit chagrined over the situation so now we had to perform an act harder than crossing a tight wire over the Niagara Falls—not laugh when your gigglometer is all the way to the right. So, we stared straight ahead instead of at each other in an attempt not to catch each other’s eye. However, while my mouth managed to not let most of the laughter scoops escape and I was able to mask the little drips that did get away with a cough, I couldn’t stop the tears. Waterproof mascara, yet again, you have done me well.

 

And, isn’t there always a situation where you shouldn’t laugh? While this may sound a bit morbid, funerals come to mind. Emotions are always running high at these sad events and I think it just takes one flip of events to go from crying to laughing. For instance, my family was crossing the road in a procession line from the funeral home to the church for my dad’s funeral. Of course we were crying and I was walking next to my cousin when an old man came cruising pretty hard down the street and realized he had better hit the brakes unless he wanted to add more people in need of funeral services and in doing so, his head went forward and back just like in a cartoon. My cousin, inches from me, looked at me and said, “Well, I don’t know if I’m supposed to laugh or cry now!” I’m convinced that my father, a man with a wonderful sense of humor but an affliction of GuffawFlaw (the uncontrollable desire to laugh at the wrong time), sent that driver to trigger the symptoms in his family during his mourning time. GuffawFlaw is hereditary—his sister and children and my sister and I all fall victim to it.


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