In these final fractious moments leading up to joy for some and bitterness for others, I have struggled to find something funny to say.

Yeah, I know.

I literally laid awake this morning trying to think of something that would make us all laugh. I came up empty.

But then I remembered my best friend Cheryl, whose antics have been a huge portion of my life since I was 13.

It was Cheryl who walked with me a half mile or so on a frozen gravel road when I told her never to hit the brakes when your car goes into a slide. Then showed her why.

It was Cheryl, on her way to an important job interview, who had a pheasant fly through her open car window and into her lap.

It was Cheryl who, as an acrobat in the high school production of “Carnival,” attempted to verbally explain the routine to the director who was expecting to see it. I recall he was standing in the back of the auditorium when he screamed: “Get that woman off my stage!”

Somewhere in all of those years, my parents encouraged me to have a few friends over to keep us away from some notorious local event that had been rumored and we proceeded to empty the liquor cabinet.

That was the night Cheryl barfed into the bridal wreath bush just over the east edge of our front porch steps.

Mom was a little outraged when we told her.

I gave Cheryl her worst perm ever when I was living in New England and she came for a visit. Her hair was short — she’d had another bad experience with a hairdresser. I karmically proved things could get even worse. With the help of our friend Brad, we methodically created tiny braids all over her head, then gave her the perm.

Did I mention cocktails?

Too many of them in, we remembered the perm.

Cheryl said she could hear her hair crackling.

A few weeks later, we all gathered at my parents’ house for a Christmas party. My Dad, who adored Cheryl in the kind of bemused way a father can appreciate the craziness his daughter can get up to, looked at Cheryl’s hair and announced: “By God, Sister, your hair is looking better and better!”

Did I mention the cocktails?

We had wrapped Cheryl’s head in a chartreuse turban, what was left of her hair sticking above the wrap in a way only burned broccoli could replicate.

My mother snickered into her bourbon.

Mom, I suppose like all mothers, sometimes didn’t have the patience for what her kids could get up to.

That included Cheryl.

Fast forward to my father’s quick and wholly unexpected death. By then, Cheryl was married and in Chicago. But there she was, right beside me on the day we memorialized him.

That impressed my Mom.

In the car after the service, my brother driving, Mom, now a widow, rode in the front seat. It was silent for a while.

Then Cheryl said, “Naomi, thank you for letting me be a part of your family.”

“You can puke in my bushes anytime,” Mom said.

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal. She is a 2024 Iowa Newspaper Association Master Columnist.