The Great Laugh

It's beautiful, the "Before Dawn" world. It's quiet. Unassuming. You can hear the world catching its breath, relaxing before the gear up for the coming day.

As much as I dislike working night shift, I love that there's a whole other world that few people are a part of, or get to see.

I was at the Yuma Wal-Mart around 3am the other day. It seemed like absolutely everybody was in the parking lot collecting shopping carts! I don't actually know how to explain the feeling I had walking from the car to the doors. It was like being a part of a well-choreographed dance. Everybody was moving at the right pace and time to make it look organized, yet not planned out. Organized-chaos. My favorite oxymoron:)

People that are working, shopping, can't sleep...they're a special bunch. They're easy-going. They live a no rush, no pressure life. (At least the Wal-Mart and Del Taco employees do!) I wore my SDSU hoodie to Wal-Mart this morning (about 4am) and I chatted with a lady-worker for about 5mins about how she froze her nylons after she got married to a Marine and moved to his family's farm in Lincoln, NE. They were married in Minneapolis and she like the SD, MN, and NE area. It was an inane story to me, but she wouldn't stop laughing! She wouldn't have been able to chat like that with the customers that come during the day. I appreciate the story now and am glad that she was able to get me to stop thinking about work, even for five minutes.

She's divorced now, but she still has fond memories of that time and those places. I'm leaving Yuma in a few hours. I won't necessarily have fond memories, but I've relearned a great lesson about life. I've become too serious about things. I haven't had a great laugh in who knows how long. You know the laughs I'm talking about. The laugh that comes from the belly and hurts when you do it too long. The laugh that leads to snorting. The contagious laugh. The Great Laugh. I miss it. I need to find it.