Natalie’s Joke

Natalie has developed for herself a nice sense of humor, and I can tell that she is starting to pick up on things at school. Half of what she says, I wonder where they came from, and the other day, she bound into the room just tickled pink by a new joke she must have heard from the other kids at school. To my recollection, this is the first time she ever told a joke, a standard two-liner with the setup and the punch line, not just something silly she made up.

Kara and I were putting her down for the night earlier this week and she asked, “Do you want to hear a joke?” We couldn’t turn down an offer like that, so of course we said yes. She smiled at the very thought of telling a joke.

“What’s on a cow’s back?” she asked, and then burst into hysterical laughter, and you could tell the way her eyes turned into half-moons and she threw both hands over her mouth that the punch line was just bouncing around inside of her head and she couldn’t wait to get it out before she exploded with laughter.

I can’t remember all the times my brother and I traded elephant jokes (Here, see for yourself) in the darkness of our room late at night and how we spent half of the time trying to suppress howls of laughter before we could even say the punch line. The first one is always stupid, but the 101st one is insanely comical.

That was Natalie, rolling with hilarity before she could even get out the punch line.

We were driving to… where else, right? Target on Friday night and Natalie was in the back seat chatting away about the usual things, taking the “wiggly road” and if she can see Target yet (the road into Target is up on a hill so you can look down at it on the way in), and then she tells me to “slow down.” I wasn’t driving fast but it makes her happy to tell me what to do, I think (she is her mother’s daughter), and then she says, “Slow down starts with S.” We were pretty amazed. Kara told her how smart she was, and then asked her what “smart” started with, to which she responded, “S!” We tried it with a couple of other words, one that started with W and another that started with N, and she got them both right away.

Genius.

Oh, right, so anyway, “What’s on a cow’s back?”

“His tail.”

Of course.