Hi!  I’m so glad you knocked on my internet door again. Yes, the teapot is hot and chocolate chip cookies are, too. Help yourself.

But you are probably eager to say to me, “Who doesn’t like to watch kids laugh?”

My answer is that I think a lot of people who enjoy watching kids have fun don’t really watch how they laugh.  When kids laugh, it literally comes from their toes and every part of their body.

For a half hour, three afternoons a week, I have the extreme pleasure of watching kids laugh as hard as a human is capable.  The kids, mostly boys, come into my classroom after being dropped off by one of the Boys and Girls Club busses.  They arrive in spurts as they come on different busses so as more kids pour in, the more the laughter escalates.

Fortunately, I have empty space where kids can throw around a Nerf ball and play Twister.  Now those games are fun, but when ten first grade boys get together right after being in school all day, you are looking at laughter that’s so intense, they end up rolling and squealing on the floor.  You just want to bottle that joy because you know you could make the whole world happier.

What really interests me is that it takes so little to make the kids laugh.  As grownups, we look at them and think”silly.” They are just being silly.  Yes, they are.

These kids aren’t trying to score a homerun with the Nerf ball or be the winner of the Twister game; they just want to push, shove, roll around on the floor, and generally resemble a litter of little puppies. They are not trying to injure each other; they are trying to interact with their friends in a very primitive way.

How old are we when we begin to lose that spontaneous sense of joy?  What causes us to lose it?  It’s understandable that we need to stop pushing, shoving and rolling on the floor at some point, but why don’t we substitute other ways of experiencing joy more easily?

Do you have ways of finding joy and unbridled laughter in your life?  It’s your turn to talk now that you drank your tea and ate your cookies.  I look forward to hearing from you.  That’s part of my joy.

COMING NEXT:  There’s a Blog In Your Future (Titles of b