Why Is That Funny?

Family Friday

As I've said many times, to maintain your sanity while parenting, you must draw on your sense of humor.  Keep in mind, however, that you and your children will likely disagree about what exactly constitutes humor.

The movie A Christmas Story aired around-the-clock on Christmas Day, and my kids and I caught the last half hour or so of it.   I had already talked up this movie and its hilarity quite a bit, so their expectations were high.  (Note:  I'll assume familiarity with this 1983 classic – so if you've been under a rock for the past quarter-century and don't want any surprises spoiled, stop reading here). 

We watched Santa kick Ralphie down the slide at the mall, then saw poor Ralphie forced to wear the hot pink bunny suit that Great Aunt Whoever sent.  By the time the next-door neighbor's despised dogs scarf down the family's Christmas turkey, I'm in hysterics.

But then my eight-year-old son turns to me and demands to know: "Why is that funny?"

I'm caught off-guard. "Huh?"

My son reiterates: "There's nothing funny about this movie at all."

Suddenly, I'm seeing the dog-turkey scene through his eyes – the movie mother is crying, the movie dad is enraged, the kids look petrified.  I stammer something about how kids and adults often find different things funny.

Now that isn't to say my son didn't enjoy the movie, as it features kids his age and a plot he could relate to.  He just didn't find it funny.  I guess it's a good thing we missed the earlier parts, where the kid's tongue gets stuck to the flagpole, or the bully gets beaten up, or Ralphie accidentally lets an f-bomb slip.

Consistent with their less advanced cognition, kids typically appreciate more obvious humor.  When someone falls down and goes boom, hilarity typically ensues.  Simply seeing other people laugh is enough to launch giggles in my three-year-old.  (TV producers know that this works for adults too, which is why they invented laugh tracks).

When we have mastered something that once threatened us, we are much more likely to find it funny the next time the situation arises – or when we watch others go through it.  As you've probably heard, young children love toilet humor largely because they've only very recently mastered the bathroom.

As adults, we've all lived through disappointments and embarrassments, but perspective accrues as we age, and we realize that most frustrations do not add up to tragedy.  I can laugh at the Christmas Story family's predicaments because I, like most people, have been-there-done-that.  On two different occasions, someone's hungry dog has wolfed down my much-anticipated food (filet mignon one time, a whole pumpkin pie another) before my very eyes.  All kinds of external factors have "ruined" various special occasions and holidays (kid vomit and other explosions and excretions; blizzards; cars refusing to start).  But each year these things seem less and less important.

So it's natural that an eight-year-old would not find A Christmas Story funny.  At that age (and for quite a while afterwards), everything feels like a big deal.

But occasionally adults lose perspective too, especially when under boatloads of stress.  Consider this scenario from last week:

My son lost two teeth right before Christmas – one on the 22nd and on the 23rd.  He decides to put them under his pillow on Christmas Eve, as he envisions the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus meeting up at our house, eating cookies and drinking cocoa.  For reasons known only to him, my son places his teeth in a little Tupperware container and takes them with us to a party we attended on the evening of the 23rd.

During the party, my son keeps leaving the little box around the person's house, and I keep finding it and picking it up.  Finally, I stick it in my coat pocket so he won't lose it.

As I load sleeping children into the car after the party, I note that the box is slipping out of my pocket slightly.  I remove it and place it on the floor of the minivan so it doesn't get lost. When we arrive home, my husband and I already have four trips worth of crapola to haul into the house, so of course I forget about the box.

Fast forward to the next afternoon, Christmas Eve.  My husband and I are maniacally multitasking.  I'm cleaning the kitchen when Justin comes in and wants to know where his tooth box is.

I had actually thought about the tooth box earlier, and since my husband had the minivan that day, I had asked him if he knew its whereabouts.  Nope, he said.

Thinking hard, I tell Justin that it must still be in the minivan.  He goes out and looks.  Nope, not there, he reports.  Knowing that Justin and my husband share a marked inability to find anything, I go out and look too.  It's not there.

Very puzzling indeed.  Again, I ask my husband where this tooth box could possibly be.

"Describe it," he says.

"Well, the teeth are in one of the little opaque Tupperware containers with a blue lid," I reply.

"Oh, one of those," he says, then adds, "Uh-oh."

It emerges that, in a rather uncharacteristic move, my husband decided to bring the container from the car to the kitchen sink so it could be cleaned and returned to its rightful place.  Not realizing it had teeth in it, he made the reasonable assumption that it had transported someone's lunch.  And since we have a bunch of these little containers, I likely made the same assumption when, just moments before, I had been merrily rinsing dishes, loading them in the dishwasher, grinding stuff up in the Disposall… oh geez.

We rush to the sink.  There is the blue container, lid off.  A tiny tooth lies, intact, on the edge of the counter.  But where is the other one?

I'll spare you the details of my search of the Disposall, the sink, the floor, and the trash can, but suffice it to say that the tooth never surfaced.  My husband then notes that this is actually pretty funny.  Now I've had lots of years to gain perspective, but I'd also had stress of all sorts bombarding me for three weeks straight.  Anticipating my son's howls at the news of his tooth's fate, I inform my husband that this is not funny at all.

But obviously, only one week later, I do find this funny.  My son is not permanently scarred and all is right with the world.

If something is a real tragedy, you will never find it funny, even after decades have elapsed.  Everything else – you just have to laugh and move on.

by Jenny Douglas Vidas

Comments

[Peggy]

What a thoughtful, yet FUNNY post! Thanks for sharing!