I sold my sanity for 50 cents

By Andrea

Emma is almost five and loves playing the joker. I have a feeling she comes by it honestly. Our family is a pretty comical bunch. She likes to call us the Clown Family. I wouldn't go nearly so far as to describe us this way.

For example, my husband and I rarely venture into the world of slapstick comedy. Ours is a different kind of humour. There are no banana peels, squirting flowers or coconut cream pies flying around here. Yet for some reason my daughter thinks she's Jerry Lewis. I have no idea where this comes from.

It all started with her rear end. She has a routine where she holds on to her bum, jumps up and down and yells, "My bum is on fire! My bum is on fire!" In itself this isn't so funny, but it keeps her audience (aka her three-year-old sister) in stitches. They never tire of this and it usually happens at dinner.

Some time later Emma learned about jokes, but the basic concept eluded her (and it still does). How do you explain jokes to someone who only has a rudimentary grasp of the English language and thinks everything is funny anyway?

I was at a book sale and I spotted a joke book for young readers. I made the mistake of buying it and now it looks like I'm going to have to hide it lest I completely lose my mind.

We've read this book, cover-to-cover, several times over… scratch that, a hundred times over. At this point the element of surprise that normally comes with a punch line is totally gone. And that's the glue that holds a good joke together, isn't it? The punch line has to be unexpected and it needs to make sense.

Many of the jokes are a play on words and metaphor: i.e. Why did the monster throw the clock out the window? A: He wanted to see time fly. Or, Why did the girl tiptoe past the medicine cabinet? A: She didn't want to wake the sleeping pills. Wah wah!

Well, Emma has no idea what sleeping pills are, yet she laughs hysterically every time she repeats the joke.

We're at a point now where she just repeats the joke, gets it wrong, and laughs herself silly. This tends to happen when I'm trying to get dinner on the table and can no longer hear myself think.

But perhaps I shouldn't complain. I actually prefer the joke-telling to her other schtick. Emma also does a very loud imitation of a chicken.

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[Robin]

I have that same child at home except we call her Lillianna! She is 6 years old and has been reading for years. She sits with her joke book and says, "Mom, Mom, Listen to this!" She reads me a joke and then laughs and laughs. "Did you understand that?" I ask. She pauses, "Uhm...no I guess I didn't understand it at all." Then I explain the pun to her and she laughs even harder the second time. I crack up in spite of myself. She is so darn funny. I thank god for her every day. When your daughter is at college you are going to miss this time. If I were you I would laugh and cluck with her!! You can make dinner any old time.

[Emily]

lol.

[b]

bok bok bok, i have a three year old gal who likes to pretend like she's a chicken at dinner herself. every. night. ugh.

[rachel]

LOL! I was that kid, memorizing jokebooks and telling joke after joke to whomever would listen! I honestly don't know how my parents stood it, but they were always good sports about it.