Discovering Jokes

As described in the previous post, Henry is discovering humor and joke telling. Turns out, jokes created by two year olds aren't particularly funny - or coherent.

Last night, as I was putting Henry to bed, I asked him if he wanted to tell me about his day. (He loves to do this every night.) He said, "Mommy, first, you tell me about your day."

Ok. "Well, my day was kind of boring. I went to work, I did a lot of work at my computer, I had some long meetings..." He asked a few questions and I quickly wrapped up the recap of my uneventful day. "Now tell me about your day."

"Ok. Well, my day was kind of boring..."

"What?! No it wasn't! I bet you had a fun day!"

"No, it was a little bit boring. Actually, I was having a rough day."

"You were? How come."

"Well, I was having kind of a rough day because my Daddy went pee pee on me..."

"WHAT?!"

Henry giggles. Ahh. I see what is going on here. An attempt at humor. A joke.

"Yeah, my Daddy went pee pee on me," he said again through fits of laughter.

"No he didn't - that is so silly. Tell me about your day - really."

"Well, I was having kind of a rough day. My Daddy went pee pee on me - AGAIN."

No the laughter was uncontrollable. What a little weirdo. I couldn't help but laugh too this time, since his giggles were contagious. All of a sudden it hit me - what if he says this to, you know, someone that wasn't me or Sam?! That could be a really, really, bad thing. Can you imagine if he told a random person that his Dad pees on him!?!

I quickly pulled myself together and explained that while that was very silly, it wasn't nice to talk like that. He was pretty disappointed that I didn't seem to like his joke. Clearly his sense of humor is still being developed...