A Tail of Two Squirrels

I get in trouble a lot with my kids. Mostly the 2 middle ones, who talk and stuff. "I'm thirsty," they say, and I always say, "Nice to meet you, Thirsty, I'm Mommy." and then they scowl at me and say "NO JOKES." I was raised by a joker. I don't know if I ever had one conversation with my dad where he wasn't pulling my metaphorical leg a little.

Brynn

So it is my natural bent, my heritage to mess with my kids. R2 actually understands it the most, somehow. We always say the humor section of his brain must not have been very damaged at birth. We can just look at him a certain way, or say something like, "Im gonna throw you out the window," and he gives us his huge shark-toothed grin. He's a funny guy, he plays jokes, too.

But the middle two are just figuring out humor. Toby loves Dilbert comic books and Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, stuff like that, because Toby is 40. And he says stuff like, "This song is groovin." and uses figures of speech that, you know, Scott Adams or Jim Davis or Bill Watterson would say.

And Toby and Brynn make these jokes, these knock-knock jokes or whatever kind, and they're always pretty non-sensical, which makes perfect sense for their age. I struggle with doing a little comic critique, you know, some editing and restructuring to make their jokes actually funny. I'm pretty hands-off with them, creatively. I don't tell them what to draw or how to make a craft, I don't try to redirect their songs or stories, I don't tell them when they're actually making a lion roar when they are being a bear or that trees aren't purple, I just let them do their thing. But I find myself a little bothered by the not-being-funny thing.

Toby

Toby made his squirrel drawing tail-less at storytime today, for comedic effect, and then he put a thought bubble with "I LOST MY TAIL" in it, and then he thought it would be even funnier to have a second squirrel without a tail, and I actually tried to convince him to lose the second squirrel a couple of times, like some kind of storytime-art-stage mom. And then he showed the librarian, and she laughed and laughed at his creativity, and he looked at me all triumphant. I knew it was funny, okay?

It just should have had one squirrel, or the thought bubble should have said, "WE LOST OUR TAILS," which would have been more like a tragedy or a mystery than a comic, and also, that 2nd squirrel is definitely checking out the junk in the trunk on the 1st squirrel. Now, that's funny.