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My son is 9 and thus our senses of humour are pretty much at exactly the same level now and I enjoy nothing more than laughing with my boy. I would enjoy laughing with my daughter as much, but she doesn't think I am funny and so I really have to catch her unawares to make her laugh. Do I push the boat out and try and go for the unattainable but more satisfying audience or accept that she's right and that my stuff isn't for anyone over the mental age of 10 and just stick to laughing with Ernie?
To be fair 90% of his jokes are terrible too, but somehow that makes them funnier. Is that how I've managed to be the limited success that I have been? Or is it just sad if the joker is 59 rather than 9?
With Lee and Herring we always said it would only really get funny when we both in our sixties, but still acting the same. I don't think we'll get a chance to experience that act though.
I was looking after Ernie this afternoon as Phoebe and Catie were going to see Six and after lunch we watched a few educational youtube videos.
This series had some interesting facts about prehistoric humans and why we evolved the way we did - the especially harsh and changeable environment of Africa actually led us to become the adaptable and clever species that we are, but it must have been pretty shitty being one of the hominids trying to survive at that time. The lucky ones were dragged off by leopards or carried away by eagles.
One of the prehistoric men walking with his friends, for no obvious or explained reason, had an upside-down head. It only appears for an instant but we both looked at each other and wondered if we'd seen what we thought we'd seen. We rewound and sure enough, a caveman with a wrong way round head. It was confounding and hilarious and Ernie's delight was infectious. We kept rewinding and kept laughing. How had this mistake got through? Or did a few early humans have an upside down head? We'd already watched some videos about people with different abilities and bodily setups (people who can see millions more colours than the rest of us and a man whose brain's hemispheres operated independently, so he could remember everything he'd ever seen and read two books at once, but was unable to do everyday tasks) so maybe some early men adapted to have their heads the other way up and maybe only died up because the rain kept going down their nose and drowning them.
It was, I assume, some mistake made by AI, unnoticed by the creator. Or maybe an animator deliberately put it in because they know it would surprise some families watching and make them laugh. Either way it was a lovely gift.
Ernie loved it so much that he wanted me to take a photo so we'd never forget it.
After a bit of youtube we headed into town to do some shopping. Ernie, who had maybe watched more youtube than he should have, said that when he looked at the world it felt like he was in one of the cartoons. He couldn't explain which one. I suggested it was the one with the man with the upside-down head and we laughed again. Then he said, "No, one of the more realistic ones" (probably the one about the human superpowers which combined real footage with cartoons). "What, are you saying that a man with an upside down head isn't realistic?"
As unsophisticated as our humour might be, it's fun that we're at a point where we can create running jokes and private shared experience to really make each other laugh. We pissed ourselves in the street in Hitchin.
Maybe you had to be there.
But if you had been it would have ruined it. The best jokes have an audience of one.
Some of my best ones have no audience at all to be fair.
Just check the ticket sales for my last tour.
