Laughter The Best Distraction From Boredom

     The greatest gift of friendship is laughter. It’s my friends who can always keep me laughing and free from boredom. When boredom enters my eighth grade mind, when I’m in need of a much needed laugh, or even someone to talk to or hang with, I turn to my friends. When we come together, we always seem to find ways to distract each other from boredom. Every Friday night, my friends and I found a regular distraction from boredom as we came together to laugh and play soccer. We were the Fenn Flames, a Teamworks soccer team, and I think we laughed much more than we played soccer. We weren’t the best in the league, but that didn’t matter. Unlike most teams, we came with the hope of winning games, but more importantly to have fun while doing it. One game against Sudbury I remember the most. It was the usual team, yearning to win and and sweating while doing it. The Flames, on the other hand, had come for the fun. As a group of friends somewhat skilled at playing soccer, it was more of a chance for us to hang together. Even though they were beating us, we found fun within the game by making jokes and having celebrations each either team scored. We had each other’s backs when we missed a penalty, and celebrated our success when we scored. The laughter during the Sudbury game was immense — never before had we laughed as much as a team, and their team with us. We both exploited the power of boredom on those Friday nights to come together as friends, as one team, and have fun playing soccer. It didn’t matter that we lost that game or that I missed a shot, or that we had an injury. What mattered was our team of friends, our laughter, and the multiple relationships we strengthened over two seasons.. In my opinion, we were more of a team than many others I have been on because even though we were never the best, we went out and made each other laugh and had fun. The key ingredient to a great friendship is laughter;  laughter is what brought our team to together.  Those friendships I formed were the greatest gift of all.