Laughing with Lyndsay

On Saturday night, there was a Stake dance. Maria's two daughters got dropped off here at my house for a ride up to it, but you know, the girls can't show up on time. That's lame. Nobody's there yet. "Fashionably late" is still going strong.

To make use of the time, I reminded Lyndsay that she was finally eligible for a phone upgrade from Verizon, so I sat down on the floor next to her with my laptop and we scrolled through the options. We narrowed it down to two, but she definitely preferred the teeny-tiny phone. She likes teeny-tiny things, only reinforced since she got the new iPod Nano for Christmas, which, if you haven't seen it, is teeny-tiny. With a touch screen, which cracks me up. I like to take my finger in the air and pretend I'm scrolling through the playlist at breakneck speed on that teeny-tiny screen.

To be responsible consumers, Lyndsay thought we should read the reviews for the phone she liked. The tiny one. There were about two hundred of them, overall very positive. But the negative ones? For some reason, they cracked us up. People have a lot of fire in them when they sit down to write out essay-length hate reviews on cell phones.

A lot of them had to do with the phone's tininess. People complaining about the "itty-bitty keys", and we were laughing, picturing a huge, stocky man with tree stump fingers trying to send a text with any semblance of precision.

Some people who didn't care for the phone didn't mince words:

"I hate it. It's the worst phone ever made. It just won Worst Gadget of the Year. Pros: None. Cons: Everything."

Why is that funny? I'm not even sure. You had to be there. But we were laughing so hard, with the girls on the couch undoubtedly feeling terribly left out, though we tried to reel them in. We had tears streaming down our faces. Mascara was everywhere. And we couldn't stop. Every review had us howling even more.

At one point, I read one and went crazy laughing, and then Lyndsay joined in. She looked up at the girls and said through her laughter, "I don't even know what's so funny this time. It's just that she laughs, and then I laugh!"

It was finally late enough to arrive at the dance and not be lame. I drove them out there, and before Lyndsay got out of the car, I thanked her. "That was awesome," I said. "Really, really fun. I needed that. It felt so good!" We threw a few tag lines from the reviews at each other for reminder chuckles, and off she went. I drove back home with a smile on my face.

I decided to remember that night for the rest of my life. Sitting on the living room floor with my almost grown-up Lyndsay, a year before she leaves the nest, totally in sync with each other comically. Laughing and laughing and laughing about bad cell phone reviews. Wiping smeared mascara off on our shirt sleeves, falling all over each other with hilarity that just serendipitously hit us both at the same moment. So that we could enjoy that moment for the rest of forever in our memories.

There will come a day, I know with a heavy heart, that I won't be able to see Lyndsay every day like I enjoy now. I will miss her and my heart will ache for her. She'll be busy with a new life, but I'll squeeze in a phone call anyway and catch her on her way to this or that.

"Hey Love," I'll say. "Worst. Phone. Ever. Itty-bitty keys." And in that moment, we'll be transported back in time and space to the floor of the livingroom, feeding each other the best medicine ever. Laughter.

Pure bliss.