Punchline | Laura Funk

Last year I lived in a house in West Valley City, Utah with a bunch of girls. There were five of us who paid rent, then a few more who regularly took up "residence." I knew all the girls before we moved in together, we'd been friends for around 3 years. One day during the summer we were in our back yard having a small barbeque. The neighbors were noisy, always in their back yard, which adjoined ours, with loud music playing. I was standing at the barbeque with my roommate Melissa. We'd known each other for years but had never really bonded into close friends. Suddenly she turned to me and with a somber face questioned, "Laura, why can't we be friends?" I was stunned and confused.
"But Melissa, I thought we were friends!" I answered. A huge smile came over her face and she began to laugh. I stood there, dumbfounded for a moment, searching the yard for an explanation. Suddenly the words of the song coming from our neighbor's sound system filtered into our conversation. "Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends?" I turned back to my roommate who was still consumed in a fit of laughter. "Ok, Melissa, I guess we can be friends!"