They Laughed Themselves Sick

“What did you take? Did you ever have any bad trips?”

the psychiatrist asked. “Acid and mescaline, and, no, 

I never had a bad trip,” she said. This made her think 

about the night she dropped acid 

when she was 17 and her older sister 

went to the hospital to have a baby 

that no one but her knew 

her sister was going to have. 

She remembered going home 

around 3:00 a.m. thinking 

she was in the clear, because 

surely everyone would know by then. 

But her parents were waiting. 

So she just told them her sister 

was having a baby. Their faces fell 

on the floor, and they went to their knees  

to find them. She laughed out loud, 

and the psychiatrist looked puzzled, because

she was supposed to be depressed. 

She laughed some more when she remembered 

how she told her brother their sister got raped 

and carried a baby to term under their parents' noses, 

and then they made her keep the baby. 

She and her brother laughed themselves sick.