The summer before I left for college, my sister and I were in a musical through our church. It was the most fun. (Okay, it was "Godspell.")(Yes, I had a singing solo.)(Yes, the 2nd and 3rd nights sold out).(GOSH. STOP ASKING!!!) If you have seen the show, you know that most of the musical numbers are very lighthearted. But the scenes that are dark and condemning are intense, it being about Christ's life and all. There was one particular scene when the Jesus in our play would say something about all the bad being "cast out," and that was the cue for the lights to go out and for us as a cast to fall and scatter ourselves around the tiered stage area. Every single time we rehearsed this scene, I would land right next to my sister, and this other kid, Nick, would plant himself between us, and while Jesus exhorted everyone to repent and be sober-minded, Nick would be mashing his hand into my sister's and my face and pinching our earlobes and mussing up our hair and we would be trying our very dadgum hardest not to die laughing.

Pretty much from that point on, Nick has been close to making me die from laughter poisoning. When he gets on a roll, particularly about irreverent, absurd topics, it's just hysterical. Fortunately he married someone who is delightfully good-humored, so much so that she came to stay with us for Laughapalooza 2011.

Last weekend, Nick and his lovely wife Emily came to indulge our children and spoil them with books and creampuffs and attention. I always find it a profound experience to meet the children of the people I love, to see a smaller interpretation of their features and characters in this lively little soul. Likewise, it's really something to share your little iterations with other people that you've loved for a long time.

It took a good few days for my kids to come off the rousing high from this visit. Every day since then, Baby Girl has mentioned something to the tune of, "Heyyyy, I want to see the Nick that goes with the Emily to the New York!"

May someday she, too, be in a play with an irreverent earlobe pincher.