The Rat Pack

I bought a record recently. I was on the hunt for a board game at an independent bookstore and somehow walked away with a record (I feel like that is an endangered sentence in the age of one-click shopping). The Very Best of The Rat Pack. On the cover--Dino, Sammy, and Frankie Baby. My dad always called him Frankie Baby.

I had been playing it recently when I got a FaceTime call from four of my best friends. All five of us virtually hanging out on tiny screens (that is not an endangered sentence, I’m sure of it). It’s the first time we had ever done that. Ah, technology! We were catching up, goofing off, making each other laugh.

My role in the group is the small guy with the big laugh. My friends are hilarious, and I can’t stop laughing whenever we’re together. It makes for some fun and interesting restaurant dinners, mostly for other diners; we have a great time, but I’m pretty sure it’s at the expense of others' nice, quiet night out.

So as we were talking, I noticed the album and thought it would be funny to quietly replace my face with Sammy’s, since his expression mid-laugh is a dead-ringer for what I look like when my friends make me laugh--my eyes close, my mouth opens wide, and pure happiness resonates from deep within the chambers of my heart. It’s all love and life and genuine. (As a side note, my own wordplay sense of humor mostly gets eye-rolls from the group and from the world at large, so it’s rare to get a solid, genuine laugh from anyone in my life, let alone my funny friends.)

They saw Sammy's face. They laughed. Hard. They loved it.

In that small moment of 10 seconds or so, distant as we were, virtual as we were, I felt a warmth and pride that is hard to describe. It was love, of course, but it was also something else. I had made a joke. It was specific to my group of friends. And it landed. I had done it. I made my friends laugh, really laugh.

We all have our roles in various groups. I have mine, whether it's at work or with family or in different friend groups, and they each make me comfortable. On occasion, though, I realize that it’s nice to try on another role, if not just for the fun of it. Sometimes, though, it’s more than that. It’s to connect differently, to love differently.

I’m not funny. I’m clever. I’m witty. For a few seconds on a phone call I may or may not remember in 20 years when the five of us are sipping scotch together on a night away from our families, I was hilarious. And the moment was just ours. Well, it was ours and Dino’s and Frankie Baby’s and, of course, it was Sammy’s.