Category Archives: Little Weirdos

The perfect knock-knock joke

There’s something about a knock-knock joke. Four-year-olds can’t get enough of them. This is God’s wrath on parents.

I don’t know what crime parents have committed to merit such a harsh punishment, but it must have been something really bad.

Tell a knock-knock joke to a four-year-old (which is something a sane person should never do) and he will assume that you made it up on the spot. Moreover, he will be so enchanted with your improvisational talent that he will begin to search for his own light of inspiration. He will start inventing his own knock-knock jokes, on the spot, just like you did.

Now, because you are insane, you are stuck with a four-year-old knock-knock joke salesman. You will be bombarded with impromptu nonsense, of which all you will understand are the words: “Knock. Knock.” And you will laugh. There is nothing funny about this; you will laugh nonetheless. You will laugh because you don’t have the heart not to laugh, and because you feel awkward about telling your kid to just shut up in public. Also, you are insane. It is mostly insane people who go around laughing when nothing funny is tickling their senses.

I, too, am insane. I did the unthinkable and told my son a knock-knock joke one carefree afternoon. Now, I endure marathons of comedy like this:

“Knock. Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Banana.”

Mr. Banana comes to call

I was wondering if you were interested in a free estimate for house painting.

“Banana who?”

“Banana open the door.”

Mr. Banana gets impatient

For God’s sake, open the door! I’m getting ripe out here waiting.

And I laugh. I laugh heartily, as though my tin foil helmet is tickling the base of my neck. I laugh like I’ve finally gotten the straitjacket broken in so it doesn’t pinch like it used to do.

The other night, I was enduring a bombardment of such jokes when my son proved that at least one of us still clings to a tenuous grasp on sanity. Somehow, he hit upon the perfect knock-knock joke for a four-year-old. It summed up everything in five lines. It would have been a miserable failure of a joke if it had come from the mouth of anyone even a few years older. For a four-year-old, it was perfect – perfectly funny – because great humor is rooted in truth.

“Knock. Knock.”

Who’s there?”

“I.”

“I who?”

“I have no idea what’s going on here.”

For a fleeting moment, I took off my straitjacket, exited my rubber room, and laughed at the most sanely funny thing in the world: truth.

Then, the normal barrage resumed, and I took shelter in my safe place.

Guess who isn’t buried in Lincoln’s Tomb

It turns out that my son is something of a conspiracy theorist. So far, he hasn’t been big on producing evidence for his theories, but when you are four, you just know things. If evidence were such an important thing, somebody probably would have explained to you what evidence is by now. But they haven’t, have they? Case and point.

We were driving past a cemetery the other day when the boy asked, “Daddy, is this the graveyard?”

“Yes. It’s a cemetery.”

“Is this where they buried all the zombies?” He’s big on zombies just now.

“There aren’t any zombies. They’re just people who died.”

“Why can’t we see the people who are buried there?”

“Because they are buried, underground.”

“I know they’re buried, but why do they have those big, square rocks on top of the graves?”

“Those are headstones. They tell you who’s buried there.”

“I think I know who’s buried in there.”

Holding tomb

Lincoln’s first tomb. It was sort of like a waiting area until his fancy tomb was ready.

“Oh, you do? Who?”

“Mr. Lincoln.” The boy has an unusual reverence for Abraham Lincoln. He might have gotten some of this from me, but we can’t be sure at this point.

“He is? Is Mr. Washington buried there too?”

“No. Mr. Washington is buried in a different graveyard, in a different town.”

“I should think he is.”

“You know who else is buried in there?”

“Who?”

Moving Lincoln's coffin

The last of many documented rearrangements of Lincoln’s coffin within his tomb. No pictures were taken when he was secretly moved to one of the cemeteries in our town.

“Mr. Lincoln’s mother.” Sorry, conspiracy buffs, he didn’t specify Nancy or Sarah.

“Really?”

“Yup. She is. You know who else isn’t buried in there?”

“Who?”

“John Booth.”

“I would hope not.”

“Nope. John Booth is buried in a graveyard in China.”

“China?”

Booth cemetery

Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery in 1848. John Wilkes Booth wasn’t buried there then and, according to my son, he’s not buried there now. (Image: Augustus Köllner/Laurent Deroy)

“Yeah, because that’s where he lives now.”

So, apparently, John Wilkes Booth did escape to Asia after all. I had always heard that he fled to India, but the updated story indicates it was China. What makes this new information even more startling is that, by all indications, he is still alive, although buried in a graveyard. That can’t be too comfortable for him, especially at his age.

Sounds like somebody has been watching the History Channel without Daddy again.

Kids are STILL creepy: a horror story sequel

In the early days of this blog, I wrote a post about how my son would stand beside my bed and wake me up with his heavy breathing whenever he needed something in the middle of the night. It was pretty unnerving. Since then, he has changed his methods a couple of times, leading me to the conclusion that there is no good way for him to wake me up in the middle of the night.

kid peeking through door crack

Some people are tormented by the Spawn of Satan. We couldn’t afford that name-brand spawn, so my wife and I concocted a do-it-yourself version of spawn to haunt our midnights.

For a while, the boy gave up coming into the room at all when he wanted to wake me. We leave our door ajar at night. He would stand in the hall and put his mouth up to the crack and urgently whisper, “Daddy!” as many times as necessary to rouse me. This resulted in a higher than normal rate of bad dreams for me.

Even when his call did not penetrate my dream world, it woke me with disturbing thoughts. You’d be surprised how similar a child’s loud whisper of “Daddy!” sounds to the gravelly bellow of a demon-possessed house commanding you to “Get out!” when you are half asleep.

He must have trained me to become a heavier sleeper. You can only lie on pins and needles for so long, waiting for an unearthly voice either to ask for a drink of water or demand that you offer your soul to Satan. Eventually, you learn to sleep through it.

Consequently, the boy doesn’t stop at the door anymore. He’s back to standing beside the bed. Only now, he is more direct about waking me up.

My wife sleeps on a particular side of our bed. That is the only side of me that somebody should be on. When a finger taps me from the other direction at 3 a.m., it can lead to some instant wakefulness.

When this exact event occurred, the other night, I did a remarkably athletic 180 degree flip beneath the covers. Thankfully, I recognized the silhouette of my pint-sized tormentor in the darkness. “What the hell are you doing here?” I bellowed. The curse must be blamed upon my semi-conscious condition. The fact that I was able to refrain from dropping an F-bomb must be credited to my superior parenting instincts.

My wife was bolted awake by my jujitsu move. “You scared the hell out me!” she shouted at one or both of us. She was also semi-conscious, and is a superior parent.

“I want you to make my bad dream go away,” the boy explained.

“Well, you shouldn’t have it anymore, because you just passed it on to me.” I didn’t say this; my wife didn’t say this; we were both thinking it.

We let him lie down with us until he fell asleep. Then we put him in his own bed. He reported no more bad dreams. I guess that means everything worked out okay, except that now I have to sleep always facing toward the outside of the bed.

Don’t let your own spittle get the best of you

Now that my son brushes his teeth by himself, I think nostalgically about what he used to say whenever he reached some developmental milestone. When congratulated upon his accomplishment, his eyes would beam pride and he would say, “I’m getting a big boy.”

The words, “I’m getting a big boy,” always made it sound as if he were heading down to the Big Boy Shelter to pick out a big boy of his very own. If there is truly such a place as the Big Boy Shelter, I would like to know about it, because there are some days when I would like to drop him off there. But he’s had all his shots, he’s good with children, and my wife has grown attached to him, so I guess I’ll keep him.

Of course, he meant, “I’m getting to be a big boy,” but at the time, even the simplest verb in all language, unprocessed by conjugation, thwarted him. It was nothing to be ashamed of; the same simple verb flummoxed Hamlet, and he got to be famous, in spite his inability to come to terms with it.

Hamlet

Contemplating basic verbs. I always do my best pondering when I’m holding my thinking skull. Maybe this guy should get one of those.

My son has since gotten to be a big boy. But big boys still have their troubles. My big boy encounters one of his most vexing troubles occasionally while brushing his teeth. This is the psychological torture caused by a dangling string of spittle.

Nine out of ten times, the boy can rinse and spit without any terrifying results. Yet, every once in a while this process leaves that tenacious thread of spittle hanging from his mouth. This is horrifying to him. He would rather examine the baby’s dirty diapers than touch a thread of saliva from his own mouth. This goes for touching it with his toothbrush as well.

group tooth brushing

“Spittle can’t harm us as long as we stick together. Now, you boys in the back just wait patiently; the girls are almost finished and a toothbrush will come available presently.” (Image: Frank P. Burke)

Whenever his spittle clings to him, as it stretches its disgusting length toward the sink, he freaks. He makes moaning and groaning and whining sounds as he first shakes, then bobs, his head in a frantic effort to free himself of the horrifying link.

Of course I’m laughing, so I’m no help.

My laughter only makes him more furious. How would you feel if there were a rattle snake, hanging by fangs stuck into your lower lip, and your dad just stood there and laughed?

But if his spit is too nasty for him to touch, I’m not getting near it.

platoon tooth brushing

It is never too soon to learn your patriotic duty as an American to stand firm against the spittle hordes.

After about 15 seconds of a full-fledged Irish jig, the strand usually snaps off. By then, the kid is breathless and exhausted, but his mouth is safe to bring his toothbrush near again. That is, unless the strand has the unholy gumption to snap in the middle. Then the terror begins all over again. Only it’s worse now, because it’s going to take longer for this shorter pendulum of swinging spittle to build up enough momentum to break free of him.

He should have continued to leave out simple verbs and just gone and adopted a big boy to do these dangerous tasks for him. It would have been easier that way.