A friend of ours called Ginny lives...

A friend of ours called Ginny lives in one of those hillside houses with a garage in front.

The rest of the family had split in all directions one Saturday morning when Ginny backed out of her garage to go to the supermarket and stopped in the driveway. She briefly admired the scarlet bougainvillea at one side of the garage, the orange bougainvillea at the other side. All last year, they’d merely yearned toward each other but this spring were uproariously intertwining.

But the reason she’d stopped was the thought of a stack of clay flowerpots in the garage. They were left over from a gardening frenzy years ago, and she’d promised them to a friend who lived on the way to the grocery store.

With the garage-door remote in hand, she advanced toward the garage. Suddenly the door swung majestically down, pinning her to the ground.

It could have been tragic. As it was, she was aware of no scratches, no aches, no harm at all. For a moment, she simply stared in amazement, from this new angle, at the riot of color overhead, and tried to wriggle free.

She was wearing jeans and a navy-blue sweat shirt. The garage door had caught the sweat shirt. She tugged at it. The garage door clung to it like a pit bull. The remote gadget had been flung some distance away. Obviously, she would have to wriggle out of the sweat shirt.

At such moments, one is apt to think with great clarity. Which neighbors were home? Was she wearing a clean bra? Too bad she didn’t have the flowerpots. She could have held two of them over her bosom. That’s when she began to laugh. And the more she laughed, the weaker she got.

Laughter, however, also acts as a great lubricator during life’s sticky patches, putting anxieties on the order of “What will people think?” in perspective. Ginny finally managed to shed her shirt and trip up the steps to the front door, arms over her front, legs arcing out from the knee down, she told us, “like a proper old-fashioned girl”--just as the mailman came.

We told her she ought to be in pictures.

Critic and author Leonard Maltin will discuss film comedy, as a matter of fact, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, on Monday at 7:30 p.m. Admission $2. Information: (310) 247-3000, Ext. 105.