As if I don't deal with enough poop on the serious.

Humor is not easily defined, and indeed ceases to be humor if you try.  I had a rather blunt English professor as an undergrad who, during a final-paper topic roundtable, told a student not to even endeavor to write about the role of humor in her selected literary work because the result would be terrible.  I imagine this professor read a great deal of terrible things, so who can blame her for nipping one in the bud, given the opportunity to do so.  My memory also flashes back to sitting in this particular professor's office, trying to get productive advice but wholly and infuriatingly unable not to cry every time I tried to utter a word.  I'd go in all Hello Professor. I would love to discuss the progress on my paper.  Then she'd say something like Well, I think your second point is quite weak and needs work.  Aaand, commence trembling and blubbering.  It is just an exquisitely awful experience when your emotions betray and shame you like that.  A handful of authority figures have had that effect on me.  But that is another story all together.

Anyhow.  Humor.  Yes.  I grew up in a family in which a high value was placed on dry wit.  After I grew out of my painfully shy period of my early years, I became a big old jokester.  This made me exceedingly popular with boys,* since I was always zinging them left and right. (*No it didn't.)  And it made me exceedingly popular with girls, too**.  (**No it didn't.  But I bonded very closely to the few that liked my nonstop talking and joke making.)  I ended up marrying someone who has just an inhuman ability to tolerate my nonstop jokes.  If you know me and you think I'm funny, know that a lot of work-shopping has to happen for me to create that appearance.  My husband is a one man workshop with a bottomless fount of patience, as well as some thick skin.

Welcome to Edie's Laff Shack! We're About to Get Gross Up In Here!

Edie is now on the threshold of humor.  She's always loved to laugh, and it's clear to me that she can tell how much I value humor.  From a very young age, she joined in laughing whenever her dad or I chuckled.  "Funny" is one of the best compliments she can give a friend.  But lately she's started to venture beyond just silly-as-funny into the more nuanced stuff.  And lemme tell ya, the learning curve is steep.

I think the Billy and Sugar jokes started during some desperate attempt to keep her from melting down during dinner.  Billy and Sugar, our dogs, are always a good source of laughs for the kiddo.  So I capitalized on this by telling a joke in which Billy and Sugar went some where (a park?), Sugar said I smell something and Billy replied I don't and Sugar said It's terrible! and Billy said I don't know what you're talking about and finally Sugar realizes Billy! You POOPED! It stinks! PEE-UW! It's low brow, for sure, but that suspense build up and the final just-a-little naughty ending was a huge hit.  But these jokes quickly dominated all family conversation.  They became tedious, of course, but I also began to regret my forethought-less decision to incorporate dog excrement jokes into our dinners, on account of the gross factor.  I've told a couple of variants without any bodily functions. The only ones that got any play, however, involved Billy and Sugar going to a restaurant and the server doing something abusive to Billy like dumping a bowl of soup on his head.  But even at the end of those, she would request amid giggles for a joke where Bih-wee and Sugah go to a restaurant, Bih-wee POOPS! And den FAHTS! Of late, I'm trying to enforce a stodgy new rule that we don't tell poop jokes at dinner, consistent with my dualistic role as family comedian and family buzz kill. 

In an effort to make the no poop jokes rule more practicable, I've tried to introduce some new jokes.  The first one she's been able to understand goes like this: What does a cat say if some one steps on its tail? ... Meee-OW!  She likes that one, though it's gotten a bit darker through retelling.  She has this beanie baby cat who she is quite attached to.  Its name is Margot.  The joke now goes What does Mah-got say when I STEP on her? Meee-OWW OW OW OW! Hahahahahaha (maniacal toddler laugh).  I've tried to explain that the joke isn't about what happens when she intentionally abuses felines, per se.  But, at least we're out of the bathroom for a spell.

I've also brought some knock-knock jokes into the mix, but these have proven too subtle as of yet.  Of course, she still wants in on the funny, so she now insists on knock-knock jokes many, many times a day.  And she won't even let me tell her the jokes. Even though I am - without a doubt - way better at knock-knock jokes than she is! No.  Edie would like to be the performer, thankyouverymuch.  So we now endure numerous, senseless knock knock jokes. Her foray into joke telling has also dove-tailed nicely / horribly with her new interest in anatomy.  At lunch yesterday, I got, Hey Mom! Knock-Knock! I bite.  Ok, who's there? She searches her punchline bank and then answers with eyes gleaming: PENIS!! Bwahahhahaha! I think I managed a Penis who? just to see whether she'd gotten that far, and her response was something like Penis I needa baf and let me in! which is an amalgam of two classic knock-knocks, involving  "Anita" and "Lettuce."  Her dad heard her PG-13 ending from the next room, and although I was able to play it cool, it got big laughs from him.  So if you see Edie any time soon, there's a good chance she'll try to get some more mileage out of this one.