but it is funny
we could laugh or not laugh all day
Scout comes up to me and presses her forehead gently to mine, then whispers, “I have lice.”
Her timing is so perfect, I feel immediate pride. Every time she reports that a kid in school has nits, the first thing I say is “just keep your head away from their head, okay?” So it was the perfect joke. Did not see it coming.
Scout is turning 10, and I wanted to write an essay about how, maybe, laughing is the only thing that matters (profound), and was collecting all the funny bits.
I got a message in the portal from Japhy’s teacher asking me to have a talk with him (again) about following instructions. “He was supposed to be doing math on iReady, but when I checked on him, he was just taking silly photos of himself on his Chromebook, which he denied,” the message explained dispassionately. Japhy’s claim was debunked: “The photo app was the only one open on his Chromebook.”
I really wanted to see those photos—his performance of self! To make yourself laugh is really something for one organism to do. And it is partly my fault; I tell him he can get away with almost anything if it’s funny. It’s also true that I spent part of fourth grade sitting at my desk in the hall, trying to read the blackboard from an extremely oblique angle, having misjudged my audience.
The afterschool teacher scolded Japhs once for running around with a stick yelling, “Penis! Penis!” It wasn’t funny, she told him.
“But it is funny,” he replied.
Ah yes, but funny to whom?
*
A divorced friend is sitting at the dinner table, prying my yellow tulips open. She explains that you can get them to open up sooner, bigger, if you help them. Later, I walk by, and the bunch are pointed jaggedly at the window, gagging.
A few months ago, I was at work in the NYC office when my work buddy, Nightbitch, was talking strategy. “We need to focus less on what we don’t do, and hone in on what we do do,” he said, and I lost it. I am 43, and my bones dissolved and floated away on a Gregorian chant. We had to stop the meeting—when you’re in the grip of the chuckles, you must wait it out. I wept laughing, and afterwards felt the relief you get from a great cry, a catharsis loophole.
I told S and J about it, and it became their bit: Japhs understood the dramatic tenor of the scene immediately. He put on a faux-corporate voice, “Let’s focus on what we do do,” and made himself cry laughing again and again. I filmed him cackling on his bunk bed and texted it to Nightbitch.
When Scout is sad or flat, I’ve gotten into the habit of telling her funny stories to break the mood. One is just an impression of what it’s like to be a parent holding hands with your child as you walk along the street. My arm is jostled and yanked by an invisible child trying to swing. I can get Scout to go boneless if I do it well enough. She wanted us to show Japhy, let him in on the bit, but his first reaction was to hold my hand and be the kid trying to yank my arm out of its socket. He’s 8, and she’s almost 10, and the line in between is a fence.
*
I’m in the Met with a friend and her dad and brother to see John Singer Sargent’s Paris work, and wondering how serious their family’s museum vibe is. It’s crowded and people have on solemn faces. I’m looking at an ocean landscape painted almost entirely in midtones when my friend walks up, ponders the work for a moment, then says, “Art.”
I make the 6 o’clock Amtrak out of the city, and get a window seat. Last time, I was boxed in by a tall man with four-foot-long legs who fell asleep instantly. I needed to get out to pee an hour into the journey, but didn’t want to wake him, so I jumped off my seat over the twin peaks of his knees and into the aisle like a cat—it was so incredibly neat, I wish you saw it. On the way back into my seat, I grabbed hold of the luggage rack above, pointed one leg in the air like a javelin, and attempted to swing up and over, but landed on the man’s lap. He was awoken, and grumpy, which made it that much funnier when I relived it for Scout. The leg lift translated very well to performance under the slanted roof of her attic.
I accidentally let S and J watch Step Brothers (turns out this is rated R), but it was worth it to see the air squeezed from Japhy’s body when Will Ferrell flung his prosthetic testicles on the drum set. I’ve never seen him laugh so hard, I actually worried that there was a biologically developmental reason children aren’t supposed to watch R-rated comedies, like he’d collapse a baby lung.
Japhy tells me they do “roasts” in the cafeteria. Teasing is a kind of affection, sometimes, but I’m not convinced second-graders know where the line is. Their personalities still feel to me like a shoddy fort, easily toppled. Also true that inserting “fart” into the middle of someone’s name can only be so powerful.
I was listening to a podcast, and they were talking about how when you’re laughing super hard, it can feel like you’ll live forever. When I make other people laugh, I sometimes touch the sublime. Even in Microsoft Teams.
Turning 10 is not turning 3. I save things that aren’t just funny reels to Scout’s Instagram folder now, mossy trees that look like bunnies, a cat lying under a quilt of fallen blossoms. Her comedy is more clever now, it has angles, but can also fall flat. “People aren’t laughing at my jokes,” she has complained, confronted with a world that is not, as promised by her lunatic mother, awaiting a chance to laff. This is part of the pain of being 10.
I can see the inheritance I thought I was giving her—sheaths of memes, a picture of me frozen on the twin summits of a man’s knees on Amtrak, tulips woken in the night with their mouth-tape torn off, doo-doo, eternal silliness—and how she’s pushed us into new territory.
Art.
asking Japhs what he wants to get Scout for her bday
Japhy: A whiteboard and a puppy
Me: Great, we can get her a whiteboard from you
Japhy: And a puppy
the podcast
if you missed it, my NYT piece on Mother’s Day cards went up (gift link here) and it’s pretty funny imo, with the goods from Claire Zulkey, Nancy Reddy, and other luminaries.
Jenny True KILLS ME
I had started to believe, completely unbeknownst to myself, that my kid was a sort of adult in kid’s clothing. He was so smart. He used big words. He was silly but he knew he was being silly. He told me what he was feeling and articulated it so well I didn’t question that he was in control of himself. But when I saw how wounded he was by the loss of the Tooth Fairy, it set me straight on any misunderstanding I had about where he is in his life.
why I pay for Sarah Miller:
She asked what had brought me here.
“I’m suicidally depressed as a result of climate collapse, encroaching fascism, and my inability to do anything but be scared and feel generally bad,” I said. “What about you?”
just loved this by Molly Young
Upon ascending the stairs, I passed a man edging his way down, and we grinned at each other — one person emerging from pointless triumph, one on his way there.
this, by Laurie Stone, is key:
People assume they are moved by witnessing emotions. The opposite is true. They are moved by writing techniques.
JON: There's a tone to this early Sesame Street stuff, both the show and the songs, where they talk about staying positive, but not in a way that invalidates sadness. They almost make sadness feel like the de facto feeling we're all starting from, without being depressing.
MAC: The melancholy 70s flute.
how-to-deal-with-one-toxic-person
I got into a hotel lift and observed that it was full of Samoyeds, radiantly white dog-shaped clouds travelling up to the fourth floor in silence, black noses twitching in the dead air.
Patricia Lockwood Patricia Lockwood
extremely up my alley: this KJM column on the idea of family curses
I loved this so much, Janet.
Especially in Microsoft teams