Homework in the summer, ye gods.

[conuly]

So, now we're doing Ana's summer homework. I'm giving her 4 - 6 math problems a day (that's just me, because I noticed to my horror she'd become super recalcitrant over the subject. If she's not being a pain it's over in 2 minutes flat) and she has to write her 5 sentences about her daily book (that's her teachers).

I've found that I can easily get her to do her work by... um... bribing her. STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER, ANA. IT IS RUDE. GAH! AND I WILL TICKLE YOU! I tell her a bad joke every time she finishes a math problem or a sentence.

I've found that a lot of jokes go right over kids' heads. When is a door not a door? When it's ajar. Have you ever used the word "ajar" except in that joke? Or they're precipitated on knowing the original joke first. Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide - a joke that falls flat if you don't know why the chicken crossed the road. (For that matter, THAT joke doesn't make any sense until you thoroughly understand how it subverts the normal joke format, which kids often don't.)

When I was a child, I thought that what's black and white and red all over was a zebra falling down the stairs, or maybe a penguin eating watermelon. My mother was told it was a nun fingerpainting. These "jokes" didn't make any sense until I learned that what's black and white and red all over is supposed to, originally, be a newspaper. But like many kids I heard the parody first and was completely baffled.

Comments

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

A sunburned zebra of course!

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

My sister made up a few jokes when she was a little kid. She was awful at the "Knock knock? (who's there?) Banana! (banana who?)" joke, so she made up her own.

Why was the baseball player naked?
'Cause he was playing centerfold. (Hey, for a nine- or so year-old kid, not bad at all!)

[conuly]

How did she even understand that joke is my question!

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

I think she did. At the time J. Geils Band's song "Centerfold" was all over the airwaves, and we kids didn't understand too much but we knew "centerfold" meant "naked picture".

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

(oh, right *learns to read* you said "HOW")

[leora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I find it vaguely unfortunate that my introduction to the story of Oedipus was Tom Lehrer's song about the story. My introduction to Catholicism was The Vatican Rag. My introduction to anti-semitism was the Tom Lehrer line "and everybody hates the Jews" in National Brotherhood Week, which made me wonder why. Later I would learn much more about why that line would be said.

Political parody is especially problematic. And, of course, I heard the line "from Senator Hegen (something like that, I forget) to... Ronald Reagan?" after Reagan took presidential office, which seriously affects it. However, I may have actually heard I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General before hearing The Elements. It's hard to say, so at least I do associate the music with the Gilbert and Sullivan.

I can't recall much for specific jokes. But I've definitely gone back to things I heard as a kid and then gone Oh!

But I still have problems with a lot of jokes along the lines of the "when it's ajar" format, although that one is better than most. The problem is that jokes that rely on something sounding close enough for me to interpret it two ways usually do not work on me. I usually do not see the second meaning, because it's just not similar enough for me. My brain does some very hard divisions, and sometimes those two things feel about as far apart as any other two random words. Making the effect closer to something like:

When is a door not a door?
When it's a cupcake!

What, how is that funny? Person repeats punchline slower... When it's a cuuupcaaake.

Umm?

Cause cupcake sounds like open.

Oh! I see, yeah, okay, I get it now, but of course it fell totally flat.

Obviously it isn't exactly like that, but that's pretty close to what the effect of a lot of those jokes is like for me. And it often takes me ages to figure out what the joke was intended to be. Although I'm learning to use echolalia to help with this. I really think this connects to me having mild CAPD.

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

My favorite from when I was a kid:

"Why did the idiot throw his clock out the window?" (Now you think the answer is going to be "because he wanted to see time fly", but no, you are mistaken...)
"Because he was an idiot!"

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

love it!

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Have you ever used the word "ajar" except in that joke?

Um. Yes, actually--when the door is almost-shut-but-not-latched, we say it's "ajar", because, well, it's not OPEN open, but it's not shut either.

[conuly]

It's always you who has to be contrarian, you know. Now I'll need to do a poll and everything. Hmph.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Humor is a fascinating subject all around.

When my brother was a toddler, we rented a car which would say in a stilted voice "A Door is Ajar" any time one was left open. We all thought it was hilarious... including my brother, who didn't get the double meaning.

That resulted in a long string of "a door is a ____" jokes, in which he or my mother would fill in the blank with the name of a random object, and both would laugh uproariously. "A door is a toaster!" "No, a door is a telephone!" It was funny, in an odd sort of way.

I think that, particularly when one is young, comedy is largely a fact of willing or deciding that something is funny. Kids learn that the format of a knock-knock joke is "funny" long before they understand that some sort of pun needs to be plugged in. I wonder how this relates to the fact that some humor can cross cultures and some just can't, even if there's no language barrier.