She laughed and then she died

Always killing the joke.

My mom almost died the other day in the most spectacular way imaginable.

She tripped over a shoe I had left in the entranceway.

She fluttered and flailed like a swan caught in a bear trap, pitching forward and finally arresting her fall against the wall.

“Why would you leave your shoe there?” she fumed. “That’s my path! You know that’s my path. I walk right through here! You almost killed me!”

I had to solemnly swear to keep my shoes safely on the mat beside the door. Satisfied, she returned to her regularly scheduled programming of puttering around the house.

And I, of course, went for the joke. Because I can’t control myself. This has been a lifelong problem.

I covertly assembled my shoes in a line at the entranceway, otherwise known as ‘mom's path.’

Then I went out on the patio, trying to hold back a gale of giggles. Wait until she sees the Great Wall of Mom, I thought. She’d be rushing outside after me, hollering and laughing all at once.

But she never came outside. Surely, she’d seen the Wall. How could she miss it? Long minutes passed before I reluctantly went back inside.

It was dead quiet. She wasn’t in the kitche — oh! There she was.

I don’t know how long, exactly, she had been holding that position. Maybe 10 whole minutes. It must have been terribly uncomfortable.

But, like me, she goes for the joke above all else.

So there she was lying painfully contorted on the floor, laughing her ass off.