Funny Girl

So, the thing is... I'm seriously worried about being funny.

I am not a funny person. I can appreciate the ability to make people laugh in others and I think my LIFE is darn amusing and most of the people around me are HILARIOUS but I'm just not that funny. I think I'm at peace with that. Well, I think I MADE peace with that. One year at Christmas, my siblings and I started telling jokes. I really can't tell jokes. REALLY. Like some people can't sing, I simply can't tell jokes. There's no gray area --either you can or you can't. By the end of the evening, I was telling the younger of my two brothers only the punch lines. "Now you make up your own jokes to go with them," I said. And he did because, see, HE'S funny.

But people really want me to be funny. Every so often, I will say something humorous by accident and my husband is so taken aback that he says "Now, see, THAT'S funny!" Like if he points out to me what's funny, maybe I will say more things like that. He looks so puzzled. I mean, clearly I CAN be funny, so why am I not funny more often? It must be that I am not really EDUCATED about what's funny and what isn't.

The thing is, a sense of humor is so important to our kids. (Not too mention those of us who spend a lot of time with them.) Studies have shown that children with strongly developed senses of humor show amplified resilience in the face of life challenges such as critical illnesses, etc. Humor has been shown to reduce stress, boost the body's immune system, decrease anxiety, enhance creativity and facilitate communication! Oh my gosh, clearly I was much too cavalier in my attitude toward this whole thing! What if my defective funny bone was having some sort of debilitating effect on my children's resiliency? Clearly, professional help was in order.

So I looked for an expert to give me some sort of Laughter Lesson Plan for my kids. I am serious --I actually went looking to see if there was some tool or technique that I was missing that would help me facilitate good senses of humor in my children. And of course, you just have to love people, there's a whole INDUSTRY centered around developing our senses of humor. It's hilarious --a whole discipline built around examining the development and effects of our senses of humor and then helping the Comically Challenged. It is a very serious thing; these people have devoted their whole lives to the study of humor.

One of them is humor researcher and therapist Paul McGhee, PhD, writer of a paper entitled: "Philogenetic and oncogenetic considerations for a theory of the origins of humor" --pretty ribald stuff right there. (I think maybe I'll e-mail that to my brother and see if he can make a joke out of it.) Anyway, he believes that there is an underlying cognitive basis for all humor, and that the emergence of a sense of humor is part of the natural development of a child. It transcends all cultures and geographic boundaries. His research has shown that children first experience humor toward the end of their first year. They LAUGH before this but the actual initiation of humorous play occurs when the choice to be playful and fun is matched by a cognitive awareness of reality. In other words, they realize they are being funny when they CHOOSE to thwart your expectations, just to make you (and themselves) laugh. Sixteen-month-old Jane, for example, thinks it's hilarious if she takes off running the minute she sees me coming around the corner with her sweater. She knows that she wants to go outside and that she has to have a sweater on before we can go but it's a lot more fun to turn reality upside down by racing away. And nobody had to tell her that's FUNNY. (Nothing funnier that frustrating Mom, after all.)

So, does it count that I can still appreciate humor, even if I can't initiate it? Because while I am lacking innate comic timing that would allow me to think of witty things to say in real time (as opposed to two days later, when I can really crack myself up), I can still appreciate a humorous SITUATION. I think the humor in parenting falls into four categories: 1) Your children pull one over on you despite your best intentions. 2) Your children embarrass you (this is only funny in retrospect) 3) Your kids say something inadvertently that causes you to leave the room so you can laugh so hard tears come and 4) Your kids start making the jokes.

Most of my brushes with hilarity come when my rather spastic good intentions go awry in parenting my kids. For example, this past week, Ana (almost four) didn't eat her lunch at school. So I told her she couldn't have a snack until she ate some Good Vitamin Food. She could have fruit, which is our rule, but nothing else. So she had some mango and continued to ask for some snack food. I opened her lunch box and told her that when she had eaten her sandwich, she could have a snack of something less nutritious.

Meanwhile, Jane had taken out some Cheerios, scrunched them underfoot and gotten on her belly to lick them off the floor. I managed to distract her and let the dog in to clean up the mess. (Am I a great housekeeper or what?) Then I chased after Jane into the den. Came out to find our VERY guilty looking dog, who had just gotten off the table from EATING ANA'S SANDWICH! (A forty-pound dog on my kitchen table -- NOT funny.)

Ana came out at the sound of me smacking the dog with a rolled-up newspaper and surveyed the scene.

Without missing a beat, she asked, "Now can I have some popcorn?"

Now, see, THAT'S funny. But it's funny because you're laughing AT me and how thoroughly bested I was by my almost four-year-old. Let's face it; I'm usually the straight man --er --MOM.

A lot of times in parenting, the appreciation of a humorous situation comes after the fact. Like after our children have embarrassed us within an inch of our lives. A friend of mine told me that her most embarrassing moment came as she sat in church with her four children and someone on their pew exhibited some, shall we say, Intestinal Distress. Her youngest, five at the time, looked up at her and said in that loud little boy voice "MOMMY?? DID YOU FART??"

Then there's the inadvertently funny things kids say, which is probably the most prevalent type of humor in parenting. I keep a collection of the funny things my kids say because I'm hoping if I pepper my conversations with these at parties, people will forgive me for droning on about my children. But they pop up in other conversations, too. Like when my friend Mary and I were writing back and forth about the events of September 11th and the effects on our kids and she sent this: "I think my eight-year-old, despite my explanations, is kind of oblivious. He came home from school last week and announced to us all: "The TOURISTS blew up some buildings in New York. Everyone is really, really mad at those TOURISTS! Mrs. Weber said TOURISM is a BIG problem in America today and that those TOURISTS are in A LOT of trouble. You all know what that means, huh? Do you? We can never go on VACATION again." Then, he huffed off." Well, there is nothing remotely funny about September 11th but I laughed out loud when I read that --I just couldn't help myself.

It's a true milestone when your kids start making jokes, though. Like when Ana was watching Jane destroy something and she turned to me and said, "She's a... a... JANE-iac!" Now, see, THAT'S funny!! And, clearly, *I* didn't teach her that. (Sigh.)

I guess that's my conclusion, really. We don't need to do anything at all to foster a sense of humor in our kids. They come with it. It's a wonderful tool we can use in helping them grow up --we can diffuse situations and address sensitive topics and remind them we love them, all with humor.

And we can laugh with them whenever possible, and AT them when they can't see us, and we can embarrass them in front of their significant others once they are grown.

Seriously. Now, see, THAT'S funny!

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (almost 4) and Jane (16 months). She lives in Austin, Texas and she panics just telling Knock-Knock jokes.