Read Online It's Okay to Laugh by Nora McInerny Purmort - Free Book Online
Authors: Nora McInerny Purmort
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were loved, cared for, and taught by example that love is patient, kind, and often annoying.
When our dad was dying, I sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his feet. He wanted to talk, and I knew that this was it: I was going to get the Danny Tanner talk Iâd been waiting for my entire life.
âNora, Iâm glad youâre here. I have something I want to tell you.â
He said this over the course of several long and labored breaths, under the respirator that fogged up over his open mouth.
I stopped rubbing his feet for a moment and leaned in, hungrily. Even my mother looked encouraged by his sudden liveliness, like he was going to reveal the whereabouts of a buried treasure.
âItâs time for you to know . . .â
I waited patiently for him to catch his breath, and see just a small hint of a smile at the corners of his papery dry lips.
âNora,â he said, breathing heavily.
âYouâre adopted.â
Chapter 9
Family
(A Story About Juggalos and Not My Actual Family, Sorry, Siblings)
M y friend Kara taught me that there are no guilty pleasures in life. There is just what you love. What you love is part of who you are, and if, like Kara, you love classic country music and red lipstick and Budweiser, if you celebrate the entire Britney Spears collection and you donât care who knows it, that doesnât make you silly. That makes you awesome. There is nothing like people who love who they are, and love what they love. Itâs intoxicating, even when what they love is uncomfortable and hard to understand.
I once found myself at an Insane Clown Posse concert in downtown Minneapolis, because a friend of a friend had an extra ticket and thought of me: a girl whose record collection is 90 percent Bright Eyes and 10 percent Taylor Swift. All I really knew about ICP was that they were scary to me. I canât watch any kind of horror movie atall, so the idea of listening to music that is described as âhorror core,â includes lyrics about chopping people up with axes, and is performed by men in clown makeup does not sound like my ideal night out.
ICP fans are commonly known as Juggalos. Youâve probably seen them in the parking lot of rural Walmarts or on episodes of Cops . For shows, they sometimes wear black and white clown face paint, hair braided into little spider legs sticking out from their heads. They commonly sport the ICP logo, an ax-wielding âpsychopathic clownâ on their mud flaps, T-shirts, and beer coozies, and they are known for both drinking and spraying one another with Faygo soda the way I imagine Beyoncé and Jay-Z spray each other with champagne on a regular Tuesday night after Blue is in bed and theyâve already swum laps in their pool of money.
I didnât grow up seeing a lot of Juggalos in Minneapolis, but they always sent a little shiver down my spine when Iâd spot one in a gas station in rural Minnesota on our way up north.
Yet somehow, I went to this show with an open heart, and a few glasses of white wine in me. I also went alone, which made me even more conspicuous because I was the lone Breton stripe in a sea of JNCO jeans and belly shirts reading PSYCHO BITCH , which gave me instant outfit envy. And still, standing in the lighting booth because one of the venue employees noticed me and correctly presumed I was there for anthropological reasons and not to have my J.Crew flats soaked with high-fructose corn syrup, I looked over this crowd of misfits, being sprayed with discount cola by twenty-foot clowns who danced across the stage, and felt my little heart swell with love as the crowd sang along:
Fuck you, fuck me, fuck us
Fuck Tom, fuck Mary, fuck Gus
Fuck Darius
I was okay until they started talking about fuck Celine Dion and Tom Petty because no, we as a society must draw the line somewhere, so I focused on drowning out the music and just tuning in to the experience, which was a demented carnival show with
When our dad was dying, I sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed his feet. He wanted to talk, and I knew that this was it: I was going to get the Danny Tanner talk Iâd been waiting for my entire life.
âNora, Iâm glad youâre here. I have something I want to tell you.â
He said this over the course of several long and labored breaths, under the respirator that fogged up over his open mouth.
I stopped rubbing his feet for a moment and leaned in, hungrily. Even my mother looked encouraged by his sudden liveliness, like he was going to reveal the whereabouts of a buried treasure.
âItâs time for you to know . . .â
I waited patiently for him to catch his breath, and see just a small hint of a smile at the corners of his papery dry lips.
âNora,â he said, breathing heavily.
âYouâre adopted.â
Chapter 9
Family
(A Story About Juggalos and Not My Actual Family, Sorry, Siblings)
M y friend Kara taught me that there are no guilty pleasures in life. There is just what you love. What you love is part of who you are, and if, like Kara, you love classic country music and red lipstick and Budweiser, if you celebrate the entire Britney Spears collection and you donât care who knows it, that doesnât make you silly. That makes you awesome. There is nothing like people who love who they are, and love what they love. Itâs intoxicating, even when what they love is uncomfortable and hard to understand.
I once found myself at an Insane Clown Posse concert in downtown Minneapolis, because a friend of a friend had an extra ticket and thought of me: a girl whose record collection is 90 percent Bright Eyes and 10 percent Taylor Swift. All I really knew about ICP was that they were scary to me. I canât watch any kind of horror movie atall, so the idea of listening to music that is described as âhorror core,â includes lyrics about chopping people up with axes, and is performed by men in clown makeup does not sound like my ideal night out.
ICP fans are commonly known as Juggalos. Youâve probably seen them in the parking lot of rural Walmarts or on episodes of Cops . For shows, they sometimes wear black and white clown face paint, hair braided into little spider legs sticking out from their heads. They commonly sport the ICP logo, an ax-wielding âpsychopathic clownâ on their mud flaps, T-shirts, and beer coozies, and they are known for both drinking and spraying one another with Faygo soda the way I imagine Beyoncé and Jay-Z spray each other with champagne on a regular Tuesday night after Blue is in bed and theyâve already swum laps in their pool of money.
I didnât grow up seeing a lot of Juggalos in Minneapolis, but they always sent a little shiver down my spine when Iâd spot one in a gas station in rural Minnesota on our way up north.
Yet somehow, I went to this show with an open heart, and a few glasses of white wine in me. I also went alone, which made me even more conspicuous because I was the lone Breton stripe in a sea of JNCO jeans and belly shirts reading PSYCHO BITCH , which gave me instant outfit envy. And still, standing in the lighting booth because one of the venue employees noticed me and correctly presumed I was there for anthropological reasons and not to have my J.Crew flats soaked with high-fructose corn syrup, I looked over this crowd of misfits, being sprayed with discount cola by twenty-foot clowns who danced across the stage, and felt my little heart swell with love as the crowd sang along:
Fuck you, fuck me, fuck us
Fuck Tom, fuck Mary, fuck Gus
Fuck Darius
I was okay until they started talking about fuck Celine Dion and Tom Petty because no, we as a society must draw the line somewhere, so I focused on drowning out the music and just tuning in to the experience, which was a demented carnival show with
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