My Favorite Non-Niece

I get along extremely well with the woman who cuts my hair. We couldn't be more different as people, except that stuff strikes us both as funny and we laugh at it. Which is enough, I suppose. She told me once that she and her husband had a party and the next morning they woke up and one of the guests had wrapped up in the tablecloth and slept on the table and there was ambrosia on the walls. I suggested, in my helpful way, that for her next party she might consider drier foods that would bounce off the walls when thrown. And she laughed and laughed.

Another time I was paying for a haircut just as a 5K race started up in town. A river of runners flowed past the salon window, a torrent of lean, wolfish bodies, taut muscles pumping, not an ounce of fat on any of them. Eventually the flood trickled away to nothing. It was early in the day, and I hadn't had breakfast yet, so I glanced in the direction of a nearby bakery. It was only a moment since the rock-hard bodies had passed. "Well," I said, "I guess I'll go get some pastry." And bless her, she fell out laughing again.

Today I walked in and she said "Hi, Uncle Matt!" and went off into another gale of laughter, her most helpless yet. For a moment I couldn't think what she meant, other than that I'm about a quarter-century older than her and avuncularly fond of her, but then it came back. She's at a new salon now, and this was my second visit. The first time, I found as I was leaving that they have you put the tip in a small envelope. It seemed only natural to write "For Monica from Uncle Matt" on the envelope, like it was a birthday present. Evidently the whole salon laughed about it the rest of the day. Bless her heart! We talked today about senses of humor, and I mentioned my longstanding belief that it's not so much that some people are funny, it's that life is funny and some people notice it more than others. We're different in many ways, as I said, but on the subject of life being funny, I think we're in perfect agreement.