When I look at my daughter I see myself in so many ways, not just in her physical features and her expressions, but in her teasing and her sense of humor except she is funnier than I am with a huge imagination. When I laugh at her and her cute girly ways, in essence, I’m laughing at myself. At three years old most children’s humor is childish, but she has a rather, not surprisingly, sophisticated sense of comedy and it’s nice to see her connect with jokes greater than “Knock—Knock”. She definitely knows the difference between funny ha-ha and funny strange and will tell me when I fail to see which is which. Every time we laugh together, even when she is doing something unknowingly funny, she is learning to laugh at herself and is seeing the correlation that is made between herself and others. We are all born with the ability to laugh and understand humor, even if we don’t always get it, and it’s that finite piece of thread that gives us cohesion and unity. And isn’t that what most of us are trying to do with humor, make a connection?
The most common bond, the one that we can all relate to is the “Lost it in plain sight” moment. I need more fingers and toes to count the amount of times I’ve frantically searched the house looking for the car keys until I realized they were right where I left them, in my hand! Or the times when I have lost my glasses on the top of my pointy little head. My daughter’s most memorable moment of “where the heck is it?” came at dinner time last December. We, with we being her Nana, myself, and my daughter, were sitting at the table eating Chinese food having normal dinner time conversations about what we had done during the day and so on. My daughter was happily slurping up her second helping of noodles when she stopped and looked around with a curious expression. She looked all around her on the floor, under the table, and on top of the table and then intoned “Hey, where did my fork go?” My mother and I, with stifled laughter, just gave each other a look. “You mean the one in your hand?” I replied. Sure enough there in her left hand was her, hard to be missed, bright green frog fork! Slapping her forehead she replied with “Oh, how silly of me”. She then went back to happily eating her noodles, this time with her fork. Nana and I just smiled knowingly and chuckled to ourselves.
It was an innocent enough remake, albeit a true one, that connected my daughter to the masses. My daughter unwittingly zinged a stranger in public. It was on the 4th of July in Rupert Square, we were there to see the fireworks with some family from out of town. It wasn’t quite dark enough for the fireworks show to begin so we killed time chatting about this, that, and other things. My cousin inquired as to how my Astronomy class was going and I proceeded to tell her about the interesting stuff I was learning about the planets, stars, and space. Venus was low in the western sky and very bright so I pointed it out along with Jupiter to the South when an anonymous voice from out of the crowd hollered out “How do you know their planets and not stars?” My daughter, without missing a beat, hands on hips, and a look of sheer annoyance on her face, sardonically countered with “Stars twinkle, planets don’t.” People around us laughed, which made her smile and giggle knowing she was the cause of their laughter. And we didn’t hear from the voice in the crowd again.
The times my daughter and I connect the most is when she plays mommy and I’m the daughter that’s when I get to see how much my humor has impacted her world. Especially when she regurgitates me back to me. Whenever possible I read a story to my daughter at bedtime. Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax is her favorite, for now. We have read it so many times that she has about half of it memorized and we go through the same routine every time we read it. When we get to page three the dialog between us is always the same. I read, “What was the Lorax? And why was it there? And why was it lifted and taken somewhere…” to which my daughter replies, “He lifted himself” then I say, “We know.” Then I start over from the top of the page “What was the Lorax? And why was it there? And why was it lifted and taken somewhere…” again she replies, very dryly, “He lifted himself” to which I once again reply, exasperated “We know!” This can go on for quite some time, depending upon our mood and the lateness of the hour.
Just recently, however my daughter wanted to play mommy and read me a bedtime story, she of course chose The Lorax. She stumbled over a few words and left out a couple of sentences hear and there but over all was doing a great job reciting, almost verbatim. Then we got to the page that asks ‘…why was he lifted and taken somewhere?” She paused, nudged me, and out of the side of her mouth said “Mommy, you’re supposed to say he lifted himself.” I obliged her request and sure enough in her best exasperated mommy voice said “We know.” I got such a bad case of the giggles that I laughed for about 5 minutes prompting Nana to come see what all the commotion was about. I laughed so hard I cried and my daughter fell asleep knowing that she possessed the ability to do so.
Every parent eagerly awaits the first laugh or giggle from their new born child, even if it is just gas, we mark the day down in their baby journals and make a huge fuss about it to anyone who will listen. We have our video cameras at the ready to capture every funny moment of their little lives. I have a video of my daughter’s first real laugh and squeal of delight. She’s drenched in shadow, bad lighting and all, but I can sure hear her, loud and clear, that’s why I keep it. As humans most of us prefer to remember the good times over the bad, maybe that’s why when Junior first laughs it’s so amazing to us. And it just keeps on getting better as she gets older. It’s incredible to watch my daughter process and learn the subtleties of what it takes to make someone laugh and she is honing her teasing ability rather nicely. Besides being a pre-school drama queen she’s becoming my little comedian. She’s been working very hard on her funny ha-ha skills and I can’t wait for the day when she is old enough for me to bestow upon her my beloved book of 101 Elephant Jokes. But until then, be it a case of the missing whatever, the zing in a public places, or just getting mommy to laugh so hard she cries I know my daughter is connecting to me and others with the fine art of humor.
by:
RaNae Bonella-Anderson
English 101 / M04 : R. Mayer
Wednesday 7 – 10 pm / Fall 2007
Assignment No. 2: Final
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