Sometimes I think that my laugh-until-it-hurts moments only occur when I am with some of my best friends. Whether its sitting at the lunch table, recounting humorous stories from the weekend, or laughing at soccer practice at some ridiculous comment, I always have my best memories with my good friends. Maybe its because we are all alike and have very similar senses of humor. Or maybe it’s because we are fifteen and sixteen-year-old girls with hormones that cause us to swing wildly from one emotion to the next in half of a second. Whatever the reasoning, I can always count on my friends for an amusing story.

That being said, one group of friends and I seem to always have comedic moments together, typically due to one person in particular. On days that we have soccer practice, my friend Olivia and I go to our teammate Liz’s house after school to change and get a snack. Liz’s sister Sarah rides there with us also, which can lead to about as much tension in the car as the Balkan Peninsula before World War One. There typically is some yelling and screaming and not a small amount of swearing, especially when Mrs. Jennifer, Liz and Sarah’s mom, is driving. So Olivia and I just sit wide-eyed and terrified in the backseat, occasionally grabbing hold of each other for dear life, mostly just cussing when we are spontaneously thrown into the side of the car. Needless to say, Mrs. Jennifer is quite an awful driver (not that I can say anything, especially considering I already lost my drivers permit and haven’t touched the drivers seat in months). And honestly, if Mrs. Jennifer wasn’t trying to read or discuss something while driving and would instead focus on the road, she probably wouldn’t even be that bad of a driver. She is a blonde to the core.

One particular afternoon, after another exhausting day of being yours truly, I practically sprinted (which doesn’t happen often, trust me) into the house to drop my backpack in Liz’s room and head to the kitchen. Now, on a side note, you should know that I have a very good relationship with food. Due to my fantastically high metabolism, I can eat about 3/4 as much as a teenage boy and not gain weight. So I was power walking my way into the kitchen when all of the sudden, the floor was the ceiling and the ceiling was the floor and I was flat on my back with all the air knocked out of my lungs. Not to mention, there was some slick substance covering my back. By the time my friends rushed into the room, slipping and sliding but managing to stay on their feet, I was standing up and examining the oily counters and wood floors. We were all tired from school, which made this that much funnier. So we are standing there, our abs (or lack thereof) hurting from the laughter, when Mrs. Jennifer walked in. She didn’t seem to find it odd that the counters and floors of her house were covered in a thick layer of some fluid. Instead, she was staring at the rest of us like we were psychotic.

Once we managed to calm down and breathe again, we asked her incredulously why there was oil all over her house. She calmly replied that since the last maid had come over wasted and had been fired, she decided to “polish” the floors and counters with oil; as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That incident was merely the first of many to occur in that house, most of them being brought on by Mrs. Jennifer’s ideas. Now we know better than to run into the kitchen, or light a candle right in front of the television sensor (it melted off), among other things. And though I may not always have my hilarious and idiotic friends around to liven up situations, I will always have the comical memories of the many times we’ve shared.