Let it all out

Grin, smile, chuckle, snicker, giggle, laugh, roar. All of these words embody a positive exhibit of emotion, yet they all denote a slightly different meaning.

On a daily basis, I will grin. I grin at my kids when they catch a pass playing football in the yard. I grin at a neighbor walking by my house.

I smile. I smile at everyone. I believe putting a smile on your face makes not only you feel better, but it also makes others around you feel better as well. So, I smile at everyone who is in my presence.

I chuckle. I chuckle a lot. A chuckle is that slight laugh that you give when a television show tells a humorous story. I chuckle at Evan when he pretends to shoot the birds with his hands on the way home. I chuckle at myself when I trip walking up the stairs.

I giggle. My giggle permeates a room when I am feeling silly. I remembering giggling with my college friend Heidi so much that we would have stomach pains the next day from overuse our muscles!

And, I laugh! I have one of those laughs that is not soft and demure. My laugh is one of those that seems to be born of a vocal lesson where the teacher tells you to "sing from your stomach." Well, I laugh from my stomach. When I truly laugh at something, I feel amazingly better. I laugh at a funny sentence created in a grammar lesson. I laugh at a student teaching me a new slang term. I laugh at myself when I burn dinner.

In the last twenty four hours, I have been giddily laughing. I am not sure why. It began when last evening after a day of school, a two hour department meeting, and four hours of parent teacher conferences. I was exhausted and had been in the school building for over 12 hours. A colleague came into the room at the end of the evening to chat, and we found ourselves laughing. Not a giggle, not a chuckle, but a tear-producing, red-faced, couldn't-stop-if-wanted-to laugh. We laughed about a student's choice of words, we laughed about the heat of the room I was in, we laughed about nothing.

Well, that exhilaration from my laugh-fest carried into today. Over the course of the day, I felt myself quick to giggle slightly at the smallest incident. Then, during my third hour class, I just lost it. Honestly, I can not recall what set me off, but I just laughed. Uncontrollably. My shoulders were shaking; I was trying to stop. Each time I gained composure, I would try to talk about commas and think how funny that seemed to me, and I would just bust out laughing. It got to the point where I was actually beginning to be embarrassed. I am a professional, and I just couldn't stop!

I am not sure why my giddiness has emerged temporarily, but my spirit has been the recipient of a cathartic lift from my laughing. My cheeks honestly hurt from the amount of smiling I have done in the last day. Maybe you should give it a try.