Why you shouldn't...get caught.

It was during a recent visit with our family that someone asked if Vince had gotten his hair cut and my gut reaction was to reply with, "No, he got them all cut". And then I laughed at myself. I remember you saying silly things like that all the time, these sayings, of course, came directly from your father, but it was still a moment in my mind that you distinctly stood out to me. The amount of dry sarcasm that literally poured out of your mouth was amazing, at times. The cheesy jokes and smart remarks were endless in our house. But to me, that is what made it so much fun to grow up as us.

Mom recently emailed me a typed 'essay', and I use this term lightly because it was hardly an essay but more like a paragraph, that she had made you write for some sort of punishment at one point. You had apparently received suspension from school for some act of rebellion, the best that we can guess is the time that you slapped someone at school. This is what it looked like:

When Mom sent this to me and I finally read it, I laughed so hard because this is SO you! In every way, shape, and form, this paragraph sums up your hard-headed, stubborn, self-righteous, sarcastic personality.

I started thinking about this 'assignment' of mom's and I quickly remembered a time that I too was made to write about a "transgression" of my own once. So I headed to the basement. After what seemed like hours (really just a few minutes) of scrounging through piles of boxes and dust I was able to locate a stack of papers from my middle school days laying, folded and rubber banded, in the bottom of box. The third one from the bottom was, indeed, the one that I was looking for. Mom made me write it after (one of thousands) of times that I had lied to her, this time I had been caught though. This was in a time before computers were at the finger tips of every kindergartner in America, so unlike you, I had to hand write mine. Mine also had to be 300 words, in which I had to hand count. I am actually surprised my hands are even still capable of working now because of all the things that I had to do by hand back then. Here is mine:

We were just so funny. I am not even sure how our parents survived us.

It seemed like to every comment or story anyone would tell there was another comment from Chelsea. It was like you had a notebook of sarcastic one liners stashed away in your brain somewhere and were ready to pull one out at all times. Whenever eggs were brought into a conversation: "Because they crack me up", when talking to Reagan about spiders: "because they bug me", talking about movie or show that you didn't like: Me: "it wasn't very good last night" You: "as opposed to when it was good? When was that?" I could always count on you for the last word of the conversation or a cheesy joke that I had to listen to your dad tell me since I was two. But it seems that those are the moments I seem to miss the most, right after I say something open ended, as if I am setting you up for the pun, but instead it just hangs in the air, and there is nothing. These are the priceless comments, phrases, and horrible jokes, the sarcasm, dry sense of humor, and especially the self preserving laugh of yours (the one that you actually got tickled with yourself) that I will miss for the rest of my life.

If someone who never met you heard you laugh, they would instantly start laughing as well. You had one of those amazing laughs that starts in the very middle of your body and radiates out to your legs and arms, and then to your face. It would start out deep and get a little higher in pitch and then dissolve into this plateau, almost as if it had wiped out all of your energy. If you got really tickled with yourself you would squint your eyes and hold your stomach. It was infectious and anyone in ear shot couldn't help but smile at your enchanting laughter. It was truly one of your most valuable assets and one that you showed off quite often (mostly at yourself).

#missthatannoyinglaugh