The most joyful sound of all human acoustics can be described as a bubbling giggle, a shrieking chortle or a sniggering cackle. Everyday I sit and listen to my grandma gab for hours, hours always punctuated with the varying degrees of laughter. She always tells me to shut up so she can finish her story, but I never do. Grandma’s laughter is the rarest thing. No words can perfectly capture their brilliant, ringing tones, but it almost has an eerie air to it. It’s like in those magical five seconds of bliss, she time travels back to when she was young. In those magical five seconds, her eyes gather in a bright flame. In those five seconds, I don’t really know my grandma, and that’s the scary thing. After the storm of happy energy has subsided, her eyes cool into sullen, dark orbs, her lips are once again scrawled with crow’s feet at the edges, and a long, pale sigh follows.

And then she begins another story.