I remembered something today that caused me to burst out laughing while walking down the street. People that saw me must have thought I spontaneously went made, but daggone it, it makes me laugh and it shouldn’t.
Years ago, and by years I mean circa 1982-83, my cousin “Mooney” and I ate at Shakey’s Pizza. I haven’t seen a Shakey’s for years so I assume they went under, but anyway, we were done and got in my car. We were parked right outside the door facing the entrance. As we got into the car we saw a family coming out with a takeout order. Mom, Dad and junior, who was probably around 6 or 7 years old. Junior was carrying the pizza, because, you know, kids love to do that (“I wanna carry it! I wanna carry it!”). Junior had the box open though, because, well, kids love to look at pizzas I guess. But he tripped. And fell face down on the still hot pizza.
Mooney busted out laughing…which despite myself, made me laugh. Junior was crying and when he raised up he had gooey cheese and pepperonis stuck to his face…which made Mooney laugh even harder. We were in the car but he was laughing so hard i thought he was going to suffocate. Admittedly the sight of Junior with peperoni and chese on his face made me laugh just as hard. I couldn’t stop laughing either because Mooney was litterally shaking the car with laughter and between guffaws saying “look! look!” with barely any breath. This fueled my laughter and both of us were on the verge of passing out from lack of air.
I finally thought I had my laughter in control when Mooney…who was still cracking up in that shaking “make it stop” kind of way says “LOOK!”. I turn and see that he’s pointing at the car next to us. (on his side). The family was in there and mom had the itty-bittiest handy wipe known to mankind and was wiping the cheese off of Junior’s face. I swear it had Pepperonis stuck to it. For some reason this made us both roar into even more laughter! Screaming, uncontrollable laughter. Both parents shot us dirty looks but we couldn’t stop. I even gasped out “That…guy…is going to…kill us!!!”. But that didn’t help us stop laughing. We must have been there ten minutes after they pulled out laughing, tears streaming down our face. God, my ribs hurt from that.
Its a mean thing to laugh at but dammit, when I think about it today it makes me laugh. The only thing that makes not feel like a super-jerk about it is if you remind Mooney about it he laughs even harder.