I am gasping for breath, doubled over in side-splitting laughter, watching my 50-year-old girlfriends make faces at my computer.

We have come together for our annual autumnal getaway to Table Rock Lake. Nine women are bunking for two nights in the magnificent log home of our friend, Connie, whom I’ve known since seventh grade.

We’ve all been bosom buddies since our training bra days (although some of us needed more “training” than others.) Thirty-eight years later, the bras have changed, but the friendships remain the same.

We are fortunate to have one another, and we know it.

Though our hostess admonished me for doing so, I brought along my new laptop to stay on top of e-mails, check Weather.com for lake conditions and take notes – just in case something column-worthy happens during the three days.

It didn’t take long for the girls to discover a program on my MacBook called Photo Booth. Like the old black-curtained boxes of our childhood – the ones in TG & Y that would spit out strips of four black-and-white pictures for 50 cents – the program uses a tiny camera, built into the computer screen, to snap self-portraits.

The fun-loving geniuses at Apple added a new twist: a special-effect feature that stretches, twists, squeezes and dents the image you see live on the screen. Think photo booth meets carnival funhouse mirror. Add four bottles of wine and a pitcher of margaritas to the mix, and you’ve got unbridled amusement.

My friend, Debbe, is first to try. As we all watch from behind, she mugs for the camera. The computer stretches her eyebrows higher than Joan Rivers’ and plumps her lips bigger than Melanie Griffith’s. It’s a new reality show: “Cosmetic Surgery Gone Horribly Wrong.” Her face is grotesque … and freaking hilarious! Especially since, moments ago, we were debating the pros and cons of Botox.

Simultaneously, we combust into fits of hysterics. My grown-up friends – the attorney, the nurse practitioner, the grandmother – are screaming and cackling with such force and volume, woodland creatures miles away are stopping dead in their tracks, their little ears cocked to the sky like in the forest fire scene from “Bambi.” (“Run! Run for your lives!!”)

With each new face and special effect, we laugh harder and harder until we become symptomatic: “I … can’t … breathe! Asthma!” “I’m going to wet my pants!” “How far to the nearest hospital?”

After all nine of our faces have been distorted, recorded and saved to disk for posterity, we collapse into our chairs, heads pounding from the oxygen rush.

I take a moment to thank my lucky stars for such wonderful friends, for unconditional love and for laughter so hard it makes your head hurt.

And I know my friends are grateful for me, too.

That is, until they see their ugly mugs in the newspaper.