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There are budding Cole Porters in the Matys household, even if their creations are slightly potty-mouthed.

The funny thing about discovering humour

BY Frank Matys February 09, 2010 06:02

Spoiler alert: the following column reveals the punch line to a legendary joke involving poultry. If you have yet to hear this joke and would rather have it delivered in person than read it here, please skip ahead a sentence or two once you reach the word “chicken.”

Meghan the Elder has discovered the wonderful world of humour.

I know this because our daughter is laughing one of those infectious laughs that starts in the belly and escapes into the air with a lot of snorting and giggles.

“Look at this,” she says.

On a lined sheet of paper, Meghan has sketched our family in pencil – my wife in a skirt and fancy shoes and me in a button- down shirt that appears to be buttoned so tightly at the neck that my head is in danger of bursting.

The entire family is smiling, as are the cat and dog.

Above it all hangs a blazing sun, which is also smiling and has, for obvious reasons, donned a pair of sunglasses.

“Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” the sun asks, presumably to the happy family below.

Meghan studies my reaction.

“Get it?” she says, hopefully. “He’s a ball of fire, so he’s really hot.”

I laugh loudly, and tell her it’s a clever line.

Wisely, I stop short of asking to buy it from her for my next column as that would be highly embarrassing if anyone found out and possibly unethical because she is nine.

Still, her sense of what is funny is growing more sophisticated by the day, and I can’t help but feel heartened by her appreciation for things that make us spurt milk through our noses.

For Meghan, knock-knock jokes long ago lost their luster, as has the one in which listeners are invited to guess why the chicken was crossing the road.

(The traditional answer is that he was attempting to reach the other side. The much funnier answer is that Colonel Sanders was chasing him.)

Bazooka Joe comics, crudely rendered cartoons printed on flimsy strips of waxy paper and given away with high-density bubblegum, are equally unfulfilling for our budding humorist.

“I don’t get it,” is Meghan’s common response to the corny scenarios involving wisecracking Joe and his gang of beady-eyed miscreants.

I do my best to defend this special brand of humour as a subtle reference to the complex relationships between children and adults but soon find myself nodding in agreement.

“You’re right,” I’ll say. “These comics stink.”

It took me 40 years to realize that.

Meghan’s sister, Colleen the Younger, is only just beginning to explore the inner workings of comedy, and her grasp of the material is tenuous.

Here, for example, is Colleen’s recent attempt at the knock-knock genre, a time-honoured style of joke telling that left me weeping with laughter during my Leave-it-to-Beaver years.

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“A doggy.”

“A doggy who?” I ask.

“The doggy ate your underwear.”

I know, the punch line is nonsensical and veers wildly from the tried-and-true formula.

Still, you have to give her marks for using “underwear,” as this is a genuinely funny word on par with “carbuncle” and “Watusi.”

I don’t even mind that Colleen suffers a giggle fit while blurting out the punch line because I know she is experiencing the unmatchable joy of a good laugh.

I can’t wait to tell her the one about the chicken crossing the road.

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