I had an opportunity tonight to reflect on the strangeness of juvenile humor.
Mia has been trying to tell jokes lately – they are invariably awful and not funny. For example: I say, “No, no, Maggie Jo!” in a sing-song voice just to be silly. Mia’s response, “No, no hotdog!” and cackles hysterically.
Huh? That’s just not funny.
BUT... Tonight I saw that humor can improve with age.
I volunteer at Awana this fall. (I’ve discovered that trapping myself in a room with two children with ADD and one with some fairly intense emotional needs, then traveling to an indoor gym to continue the process with 40 six-and-seven-year-olds at game time is not my idea of great fun. It’s actually no fun at all for me.)
Usually game time is a relatively painful and horribly loud time. But tonight I had my shining moment of joy.
Kyla, a six-year-old, came in third out of fourth in her individual race around the circle holding a beach ball. She did win our red team 50 points, however, because our game director wanted to acknowledge that she’d been grinning from ear to ear the entire time she was running.
As she came back to join our team I gave her a high-five and told her that she’d won 50 points.
“Why?” she asked, genuinely not having a clue.
“Because you were smiling your beautiful smile the whole time and being a good sport!” I answered.
She thought about that for a split second and then said, “But I wasn’t smiling – that was just gas!”
It was a beautiful moment for me, full of a belly laugh.
It was just what I needed before I turned around to pull another six-year-old out of the window sill.
No comments:
Post a Comment