Humor, Interrupted

I recently had a nice conversation with the interrupting happy frog, who politely waited his turn instead of interrupting.

Here's how I got there.

As a kid, my siblings and I must have worn out our parents' patience with knock-knock jokes. I think we had a book of them. For example:

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Dewey.
Dewey who?
Dewey have to listen to all this knocking?

Or:

int repetitions = 3;//for extra annoyance, make this 4
for (int i = 3; i > 0; i++) {
Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
}
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?

One of my brothers, who in his strenuous defense was very young, decided that the following would be a real zinger:
Knock-knock!
Who's there?
Eggs.
Eggs who?
Eggs in your face!

For added zing, he sometimes substituted words like "eyeballs" or "glasses" for "face." I remember groaning at those knock-knock-eggs jokes. I knew that one day I would have ultra-funny children, who would all inherit my dad's humor genes, and we would have a grand time.

Fast forward to about 1998. My sister called me from college (or maybe she called me when I was at college; I can't remember) to tell me the following knock-knock joke. It's great and I hate to spoil it for you, but I have heard it told on both sides of the family so if you are related to us you have probably already heard it. Okay, here it goes:

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
The interrupting cow.
The interru... ...MOOOOOOOOO!

I cracked up. After living in humor-deficient Brazil for the previous two years, I was so happy to hear a truly funny joke with an unexpected twist. The days of bad knock-knock jokes about eggs in my various body parts and accessories were long gone.

Or were they still to come?

Fast forward to about 2004, when Jimmy had become a great talker and very clever too. I was explaining the concept of knock-knock jokes to him. I told him the interrupting cow joke to illustrate. Then, for some reason I'm sure the five people I meet in heaven will ask me about and I will still be at a loss to answer, I thought I would teach this precocious but still three-year-old kiddodiddo the difference between a good knock-knock joke and a bad knock-knock joke. So I told him the eggs one. (I was young and I was foolish.) The wheels in his three-year-old mind labored furiously, and half a minute later he came back with the following knee-slapper:

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
The interrupting egg...craaaack!

The interrupting egg. How quaint. It was really funny at the time, but I fear I have permanently damaged his humor quotient. We'll see.

The result is that our kids now believe that all good knock-knock jokes involve some animal or object or phrase interrupting someone. For example, here was Amelia's contribution:

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
The interrupting princess!
The interrupting princess who?
(Imagine that sounds of crickets they play in movies when they want you to imagine silence, and then...)
Daaaance!

Unfortunately for Amelia and Jonathan, they have not figured out how to interrupt yet in this context. They are very good interrupters at other times, especially Amelia, but they don't get the interruption in the interrupting knock-knock jokes they concoct.

This year, two-year-old Jonathan became a major league talker, and once he learned about interrupting knock-knock jokes, he made up a two-parter. First he told us this one (dictated in his two-year-old accent):

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
The intewupting happy fwog.
The interrupting happy frog who?
(That cricket sound, then in a syrupy sweet voice...)
Wibbit, wibbit!

Next came the pièce de resistance:

Knock-knock!
Who's there?
The intewupting bad fwog.
The interrupting bad frog who?
(Crickets, then in his best growling voice...)
WIBBIT! WIBBIT!

It was then, during my laughter, that I realized that kids don't have to have a grown-up sense of humor to be delightful joke tellers. They enjoy telling jokes because they want to entertain, because they see us giggling at jokes. I'm grateful for our very clever children. I hope they will always try to smile and laugh.