Cantinflas

Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes aka Cantinflas

Last night I laughed more than I've laughed in months. Maybe years. I laughed until I cried and kept on laughing until I was gasping for breath, unable to speak.  I became hysterical.  I was with two of my oldest friends in the whole world, two sisters who, like me are half-Norwegian.  One of the sisters, whose house we were in cooked a marvelously delicious supper of duck breast, red cabbage and tiny potatoes with fried parsley, followed by the most perfect oblong pavlova scattered with blueberries and raspberries and blackberries. It was, we commented, like a Scandinavian wedding feast.  We sat around her wooden kitchen table, with the dogs underneath it, a husband or two (not underneath the table of course) and the pig in the cupboard in the other room (thank GOD, because the pig despises me).  We are old now; for all of us the next Significant Birthday will be (gulp) the half century but when we get together, the Humanitarian, the Screenwriter and me, we are fourteen years old, and wearing braces, and giggling so much that we think we might wet our knickers.   The reason for our hilarity? Cantinflas.  Cantinflas the Mexican Charlie Chaplin.  Cantinflas, whose name is the gift that keeps on giving.  "And don't forget to rinse either."  Like silly schoolgirls we cried -- CRIED -- while repeating the poor man's name endlessly, parrot-fashion. It's not that I'm proud of this. It's just that the opportunity to laugh until one cries is the very best therapy the world can offer.

Thank God for girlfriends.

trying VERY hard not to laugh for the camera