Beehivisms

I can recall, when I was age 12—ie., the age of what my church terms a "beehive"—my friends and I thought we were downright hilarious. Hil-ar-ious. Every week at mutual, top-notch jokes just seemed to hover all around us waiting to be picked up by our brilliant little brains and, as it turns out, no one ever left without tears of laughter streaming down her face and sore ab muscles. The odd part is that now I can't seem to recall what on earth was so dang funny. Indeed, a real mystery.

What beehive doesn't think she is hilarious though? For anyone who may not be familiar, let me fill you in on the unspoken but fundamental principles of Beehivedom.
• First, beehives have a quota of 29 outbursts of maniacal laughter per hour. Each beehive takes this rule quite seriously and gives it her all (110%).
• Second, when a group of beehives congregate, get used to hearing a symphony of noises that resonate with that of zoo animals, farm animals, and extraterrestrial animals.
• Third, if food and drink AND beehives are in the same room, one should expect at least one episode of liquid projecting from someone's mouth and/or liquid coming out of someone's nose. (Thanks to those hoot-and-holler wisecracks, you see.)
• And finally, these characteristics probably won't die off until the age of 16 (you can hope, at least). (In some cases, these characteristics don't ever die off.) (At least that's what I've heard—it's not like I'm speaking from experience or anything.)

Now that I am serving in the Young Women organization as a leader, I realize more acutely than ever, that young girls—no matter their location or era, are completely universal in behavior. I look at the squirrelly girls in our ward and I'm flooded with flashbacks of me—rolling around on the floor laughing my head off.

Luckily for both of us (sarcasm alert), Clara gets to be dragged along to mutual every week because Tom works. Most nights she does okay even though it's 2 hours past her bedtime, but since today was a rough day on the nap-front, she was so gosh-darn sleepy tonight. Plus, to add insult to injury, she was quite put-out that I wasn't sharing as much pizza with her as she preferred. I'm just glad she wasn't wailing. Instead she preferred to use her high-pitch squeal to let me know how displeased she was with the whole charade. Occasionally she snuggled into my shoulder and closed her eyes, choosing to give up the fight, but it was fruitless. Every .5 seconds she was required to perk back up again to investigate the newest outbreak of unglued laughter. The poor dear.

I tried explaining to her that someday she'd understand what was so funny. Someday when she becomes a beehive. And when she's the most hilarious girl in the world. Because then it all makes sense.