Jokes

Since late this fall the kids have been on a joke telling kick.  They think they are hilarious and about 1% are.  Unfortunately if one kid gets a laugh with a joke they retell it 100x and so do their siblings.  Chances are the first time they told it we were only mildly amused and mustered up a laugh because that is what you do as parents, laugh at terrible jokes your kids tell.  V does have a joke book, so occasionally we get to hear a decent one.


C made up a joke on the way home from school this fall and I thought it was rather clever. 

"What do you call a combine with no head?" Answer: "A fat tractor!"

D likes to make that one into a knock knock joke and it just doesn't work.  His favorite is "knock, knock, who's there? Cat. Cat who? Cat in the hat." And then he laughs. Which makes me laugh.

Dinner time became joke telling time.  V likes to talk a lot and tell his jokes, J likes to tell knock knock jokes, C gets made if she doesn't get a turn and generally repeats someone else's jokes, that person then gets mad she is copying and D doesn't like to be left out of the fun and repeats whatever he can remember.  He has a tendency for turning every joke into a knock knock joke and usually saying the answer before you can say "who's there?"    Every night at dinner for weeks on end this happened.  At first it was really cute, but they repeat the same 3-5 jokes every night and it is a little less cute.  We had to start limiting kids to a certain number of jokes. 


The best was one day V and J were exchanging jokes at the table and not letting C get a word in at all.  She was trying to be polite but she just couldn't be heard over the two of them, they are loud, always!  I was in the kitchen trying to cut an apple for them and she walks over to tell me the boys won't let her talk.  I walk over there, get the boys to stop talking and let her tell some jokes.  I return to the apple cutting and feel a tug on my shirt.  It is D and he is upset and says "they not let me talk!"  He had watched it work for his sister and came to get help from mommy.  I got the older 3 to be quiet, asked D what he had to tell them and he said "umm, huh, I not know!"  He didn't have anything to say but he wasn't about to be left out.


The boys once said to me that C and D's jokes aren't funny and they always say the same ones.  I didn't have the heart to tell them that their jokes weren't that funny either.  Instead I carefully explained that we all laughed at their jokes when they were little and they needed to do the same for C and D.  V said "but my jokes were funny."  Not as funny as you think they were was my reply.