The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out of his nose.

Keillor’s line treats childhood “highlights” not as grand achievements but as small, bodily, family moments—here, the comic triumph of making a sibling laugh uncontrollably. The humor depends on vivid physicality (food coming out of the nose) and on affectionate rivalry: the speaker measures success by the ability to delight someone close, even at the cost of mild embarrassment. In Keillor’s broader comic sensibility, such memories elevate ordinary Midwestern domestic life into something worth narrating, suggesting that intimacy, shared laughter, and the absurdity of the body can be more enduring markers of happiness than status or accomplishment.