keyword "sardonic" title "sign of the times" in misc. flash fiction

In the village of Dolgeville New York, in the next town up north of the place where I grew up wide and tall, the place that I call home again my littlest of falls, there used to be a store called McLaughlin’s. These days, of course, I can’t even remember what it sold. I think it was maybe women’s clothes? I can’t say for certain, it closed when I was just a little kid or so.

Things have looked better for Dolgeville, a small farm town in an age when small farm towns in the rural Northeast are not what they used to be, hence why the probably-women’s clothes store McLaughlin’s closed or at least that’s what I suppose. I mean, I’m assuming, who really knows?

But here’s the thing: the Dolgeville McLaughlin’s storefront still has signage, even though now the building may now just be storage, even though for all I know these days it might just house apartments, still a couple of years back, someone took a few of the letters away from the word McLaughlin’s, someone took about half and what was once a storefront called “McLaughlin’s”, is now just a partial sign on an abandoned looking building, a marquee that just says “Laugh”.

I don’t know if the vandals were trying to be sarcastic or sardonic, principled protest or if it was just a whim hedonic, I don’t know if the people were trying to make some larger dark-hearted point about America or if they were just being ironic but now all that sign says is just “Laugh”.

Laugh. Now I’m the type to find meanings where they aren’t sometimes, sometimes I don’t have a clue but this all just reminds me, that’s just sometimes what you have to do, just laugh. Despite the hardships and the economic turmoil, laugh. Despite the losses and depression or depopulation and regressions, sometimes you have to just let yourself laugh. The seas are boiling over, there’s wars down every path, it’s all snakes in the clover, shuffle up the past a little bit and take a breath so that you can laugh.

Sometimes things just fall apart, and you can’t fix them all or even half, sometimes all you can do make the best of the situation, create something beautiful with the things time has left behind, carve a joke into the side of the feet of the crumbled colossus and just laugh. You have to laugh when you can laugh, you’ll go crazy with nostalgia if you don’t occasionally let yourself laugh.

There are some things we can’t get back, not for love and not for blood, not for treasure, not for money, there are things that must return to dust but you can still draw smiley faces in the rubble, you can still choose to find things funny. Take a look up at the message in the sky, friend, parse the words out until you find your “laugh” again.