Happy April, Fools
Yes, it’s April Fools’ Day so it’s fitting that I’m blogging. I consider myself a certified (or is that certifiable?) goof by anyone’s standards. My husband loves how I crack jokes–or make a really off-the-wall pun–and laugh myself silly. I used to want to be such a stand-up woman, the kind who wore cardigan sets and pearls, whose hair and nails always looked perfect, and who had the perfect reply for any occasion. I realized instead I’m more of a stand-up comic, who looks at the odd side of things and has a penchant for sarcasm (and, yes, puns).
So I take great pride in my four-year-old niece Audrey, who has a flair for the dramatic and a keen eye for jokes. She likes to make them up herself, or steal a line from someone and turn it into a comedy routine. Take Christmas a year ago when I made this joke to the grown-ups in the family:
Me: “What did Santa say to Tiger Woods?”
Them: “What?”
Them: “What?”
Me: “Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho” (or however many “hos” Tiger actually had accounted for at the time).
Them: “Where’d you hear that?”
Me: “I made it up!”
From then on, Audrey would walk around saying, “You know why? ‘Cause I made it up!” Ed and I adopted that into our own lexicon. Whenever one of us says, “Do you know why?” The other replies, “‘Cause I made it up!”
I’m thinking, too, that Audrey had someone tell her she was a pain in the butt since that seems to be one of her recurring phrases, especially in her jokes. Like this one, sprung on me at her little brother’s birthday party last weekend:
Audrey: “Knock knock.”
Me: “Who’s there?”
Audrey: “You.”
Me: “You who?”
Audrey: “You’re a pain in the butt, Aunt Susan!”
My family found that hilarious (and strangely apropos). I’m not sure where she heard this one, or if she “made it up!” But here goes:
Audrey: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Me: “Why?”
Audrey: “So he could rule the world!”
Of course!
The other day when Audrey asked my mother where she’d been that morning, and my mom told her, “I was at the doctor,” Audrey asked, “Was it a paleontologist?” I wondered if she thought her grandmother was a fossil. Then I found out she’d apparently been watching a kid show on PBS with a dinosaur “doctor” on it!
So I’d love to hear your silliest joke on this lovely April Fools’ Day. Or make one up. As you can tell by my favorite “Audrey jokes,” it doesn’t matter if they even make sense.