We have a problem in our home.  There is a humor deficit.

It’s not an overall humor deficit.  Believe me, there’s plenty to laugh about at around here.  Rather we have an unequal amount of humor arising from my daughter and my son.  Here’s the problem.

Asher is funny.  God bless him he’s not trying to be.  He has no intention to be funny.  But, on a regular basis, he says things that crack us all up.  And it’s not even the words he’s saying, there’s just something about his delivery that is inherently hilarious. 

On the flip side, Audra is not funny.   She is charming and talented and cute as a button, but she’s just not particularly funny.  And it’s driving her crazy. 

You see Audra likes to be the center of attention.  She would like nothing better than for the whole world to stop and look at her and marvel at her cuteness, faun over her singing and laugh uproariously at her jokes.  There are times when you all but have to beat her back with a stick to keep her from inserting herself into a group of adults and bursting into song.

On the other hand, Asher couldn’t care less.  He likes people, I mean why not?  But he had no overriding need to be the focus of everyone.  He just is who he is and does what he does and somehow, that is frequently hysterical. 

For instance, a couple of nights ago we’re sitting at the table and completely unsolicited, very matter-of-factly, Asher says,

“There are bats in my woom.”
 
The whole table stopped for a beat.  “Really?”

“Yes.”  Asher said, and then continued eating, seemingly unconcerned.

“Uh, what kind of bats?”

“Big bats”

“Um, what were they doing?”

“Fwying awound”

At this point, I’m beginning to worry about an infestation.  We’re kind of out in the woods and it wouldn’t be the craziest thing in the world to find flying rats in the house.  So I asked,

“What color were they?’

“Pink.”

“So to be clear,” I said, “You had giant pink bats flying around your room?”

“Yes.”  Asher then looks around the room as if wondering “should I be concerned?”

“Were you scared?”

“Yes”

“Did the Bats do anything to you?”

“Yes, they gwabbed me by my wegs and swung me wound and wound.”

Ok.  This is probably one of those you-had-to-be-there moments, but this conversation went on for about 15 minutes and had most of the table in stitches.  You see, Asher is random and for some reason in our culture (or at least in our family) random is funny. 

It also cracks me up when I hear him playing with his trains and singing quietly to himself:

“Evwybody have fun tonight.  Evwybody Wang Chung tonight.”

Or, for instance, last night at the table, we were all sitting around talking about the upcoming debate and Asher turns to Jessie and very seriously says:

“I have eyebrows!”

Now, I can’t tell you exactly why, but that is damned funny.

He’s not trying to be funny, he just is and unfortunately Audra can’t stand this.  It’s not that she begrudges Asher his funny, but rather that she just doesn’t like to see the spotlight turned off of her for too long. 

You can almost feel a sense of desperation from her.  For example, last night after the laughter died down from Asher’s eyebrow comment, Audra turned to the table and said:

“I have a nose!”

It’s not funny.  I don’t know exactly why.  But it’s just not.

For a while she got into the habit of repeating whatever someone had just said that had garnered a laugh.  So a common scene might go something like this.

We’re eating at the dinner table and Jessie’s talking about how he ran into a lawyer for the plumbing union he’s trying to get hired at.  I quickly asked “so did you talk to her.”

Jessie smiles and says, “yeah, I gave her part of my cookie.”

We all laugh and I said.  “you didn’t give her the whole cookie?  Just part of it?”

“Nah,” said Jessie.  “It was a good cookie!”

We all laugh, at which point Audra shouts out,

“Ha ha ha!  I have a good cookie!”

It’s not funny.

It’s just not.  In fact, there’s something about a young child desperately trying to make you laugh by repeating a joke that they didn’t even understand in the first place that is very very not funny. 

For awhile I tried to help the situation by explaining to Audra that repeating someone else’s joke is almost never funny and that she should use her own jokes.  This would lead to circumstances where after the cookie line I would lean over and remind Audra to “get your own jokes.”  At which point, she would pause and then say.”

“I have a good banana!”

I think I made things worse.

And the thing is, that Audra is sometimes funny, but at this age, most of the time humor is unintentional  (I have eyebrows!)

So here’s a small prayer, that as my theater loving daughter grows older she will, in fact, get her own jokes and be the funny funny girl that she longs to be. 

And if not, maybe she can go into pest control.  Because we have a serious need to get rid of some giant pink bats.