At a slumber party in the fourth grade, my friend Susie Lyons told a story so funny that it laid me flat out on the green shag carpet, left me wheezing and whooping and brought every detail of the world around me (the fake-wood paneling on the walls and the faded glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling) into joyful focus. At the same time that the laughter made the world more real, it also transported me, gave me license to join the humming stars above me, and made me feel as I sometimes did in dreams: as if I had flapped my arms and taken off into the clear blue sky and was on my way to another planet entirely.

I wish I could tell you the story that Susie told that night, but I don’t remember it. All I recall is that something happened to someone and there was a truck involved. All I remember is this sentence: “She looked up and a semi was barreling toward her.”

Three decades later and it makes me laugh just to type the words.

“She looked up and a semi was barreling toward her.”

Why is that so funny? Why have I remembered it all these years? And why have I thought of it so often in the last few weeks?

It could be because I am working on a lecture on writing and Susie’s sentence is in many ways, an example of how to make people listen. It’s dramatic. Why? Part of the reason is that she juxtaposes an impossibly small gesture (looking up) with an enormous action (a semi barreling toward someone). And then, too, her word choice is inspired. “Semi,” in its specificity, is a much funnier word than “truck;” and “barreling” has a whole host of connotations (you see a barrel rolling down a hill; you get a sense of speed and things careening out of control) that you wouldn’t get if you simply said “coming at her.” Listening to Susie that night, I was conscious for the first time of the power of the right word.

Or maybe it’s something entirely different; maybe I am remembering that sentence and that night and that laughter because I have been made more aware lately of the metaphorical semis bearing down on me, on all of us (the knowledge, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, that “there’s things that’ll knock you down you don’t even see coming/And send you crawling like a baby back home”).

“She looked up and a semi was barreling toward her.”

Here is the world.

Here is the world coming at you in all its power, its glory and sorrow.

I wonder if those glow-in-the-dark stars are still stuck on that ceiling, humming with joy.