Love from: Sarah Stuart

My kids always complain that all I care about with people is whether they are funny. Of course, I am right. The perfect example is Lauren and Karen, who are a kind of Gracie and Allen team: they see the absurdity in everything and, even when they bicker (or, maybe, especially when they bicker) are so funny and fun one’s whole world view is refreshed and uplifted. We were so lucky to meet them thirty years ago and bring up our kids together. We were the conventional family with the rules like “six grapes” before dessert, and they were the Walters—who had a bathtub in the yard that was actually pretty. Hanging around them in their kitchen was like living in a sitcom. I remember one afternoon five-year-old Peter saying, “Hey mom, let’s get a monkey!” and Karen saying, “Well, Peter, that sounds like fun!” and eight-year-old Edward saying, “No no no no!” and, as Lauren waltzed in, “Dad, Dad do NOT get a monkey!” And Lauren saying, “I dunno, it sounds neat!”

When I told Karen early on that I thought Lauren was funny, she said, “Well don’t tell him, he’ll start making jokes.” But Lauren doesn’t have to make jokes to be funny-- his humor lies in his comic reactions. I will remember until the day I die the expression on his face the time he fell sound asleep cradling a full glass of milk during a heated Scrabble game, and then woke with a start, the milk shooting up like a comet before cascading down everywhere in a white sheet. Sometimes we would go to some lengths just to view a Lauren reaction: one birthday we sadistically pretended we were giving him a pet rabbit just to see his horror when he opened first, the carefully gift-wrapped box of rabbit food, then, the beribboned box with holes (and a rabbit stuffy within). I think at the root of Lauren’s humor––and the fact he allows you to make fun him mercilessly (my favorite expression of affection)––is that he honestly loves people. He is always opening his house to near strangers, often after first encounters—some less successful than others, like the homeless babysitter (we will not go there) or the hitchhiker he hired to make (a rather stringy) jerk chicken a few times a week. He’ll do anything for guests, including all the grocery shopping, which works well for everyone (as long as you like salmon), and particularly well for Karen, who recently confessed that Lauren carries her purse—it just makes things so much easier.