Funny, But Not Ha Ha Funny
Sometimes I wish I knew what was happening inside Abbie’s head. There are times when the answer seems to be “not much,” like when I strap her into her car seat, turn on her Sesame Street CD, and watch her go limp as she tries to make time move as quickly as possible. Then there are the times when she’s thinking something, and it’s strange. That little hamster inside her head is growing stronger, and sometimes it turns its little wheel in an odd direction.
The other day we were sitting on the floor in her room reading after lunch. Post lunch is prime reading time as it helps to calm her down for the impending nap, and helps me make up for ignoring her all morning while I performed essential tasks like running errands, cleaning the house, and reading the newspaper. I usually let Abbie choose the book to read, a process that usually involves her pulling the top book out of her basket o’ books and throwing it in my lap. This usually means that last book she read and put away earlier is the first book she pulls out later, leading to repeated reading of the same book. Those top books become the Yankees of her book collection, showing up in the playoffs of reading time and again until I just get so sick of them I want to punch Derek Jeter. That’s when I rotate some books between the basket and the shelf.
On this particular day, she was looking for something a little different, as evidenced by her insistence on throwing books across the floor in her effort to find what she wanted. Finally she threw her desired book into my lap, “My First Counting Book.” This book is not to be confused with other fine counting books in our collection like “My Little 123 Book,”* “My First 123 Book,”* and “My Little Counting Book.”** Those other titles are sturdy board books with thick cardboard pages resistant to bending and gnawing. “My First Counting Book” has regular paper pages like the kind you’d see in your standard novel, assuming that your novel has cute drawings of animals. We have many of these books with paper pages on the shelf, but I don’t ordinarily let her access these books for fear of her ruining them before she has a chance to comprehend them, or at least before she has a chance to draw in them. This book is an exception because she loves counting, by which I mean she loves watching me count. I try to keep as many counting books in the rotation as possible to keep the experience varied and my ARod punching desires low.
The book uses animals to count to ten with a little poem accompanying each number. The last four pages review the numbers, cramming all the animals and their accompanying numbers from the earlier pages into tiny lines. This is kind of like a study guide for the book in case I want to start giving Abbie closed-book quizzes about the material in a few months, which I do, assuming she starts talking.
I counted the animals, read the poems, and reached the review section. When I reached “seven ducklings,” Abbie started laughing. As soon as I stopped counting, she stopped laughing. I counted the eight fish, and got the same laughs. Same with the nine geese. The ten nuts weren’t quite as funny, so I returned to the fish and got more laughs.
I really didn’t understand where this laughter was coming from. The drawings were more realistic than silly. I was reading with my normal droll inflection, not some goofy voice. The dog wasn’t running around behind me. She just found something very funny on those pages. Maybe found the punchline to a toddler joke.*** Maybe she was just getting goofy so close to her naptime. Maybe she too thought it was funny the Yankees were out of the playoff already. Regardless, I wish I knew what triggered her hamster to run in the “laugh” direction.
* Those are actual titles from her collection.
** That’s not an actual title from her collection. If it doesn’t exist somewhere, though, I’d be shocked. And I know a good title for a children’s book.
*** Like “Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!” but unknown to anybody old enough to measure their age in years.
The other day we were sitting on the floor in her room reading after lunch. Post lunch is prime reading time as it helps to calm her down for the impending nap, and helps me make up for ignoring her all morning while I performed essential tasks like running errands, cleaning the house, and reading the newspaper. I usually let Abbie choose the book to read, a process that usually involves her pulling the top book out of her basket o’ books and throwing it in my lap. This usually means that last book she read and put away earlier is the first book she pulls out later, leading to repeated reading of the same book. Those top books become the Yankees of her book collection, showing up in the playoffs of reading time and again until I just get so sick of them I want to punch Derek Jeter. That’s when I rotate some books between the basket and the shelf.
On this particular day, she was looking for something a little different, as evidenced by her insistence on throwing books across the floor in her effort to find what she wanted. Finally she threw her desired book into my lap, “My First Counting Book.” This book is not to be confused with other fine counting books in our collection like “My Little 123 Book,”* “My First 123 Book,”* and “My Little Counting Book.”** Those other titles are sturdy board books with thick cardboard pages resistant to bending and gnawing. “My First Counting Book” has regular paper pages like the kind you’d see in your standard novel, assuming that your novel has cute drawings of animals. We have many of these books with paper pages on the shelf, but I don’t ordinarily let her access these books for fear of her ruining them before she has a chance to comprehend them, or at least before she has a chance to draw in them. This book is an exception because she loves counting, by which I mean she loves watching me count. I try to keep as many counting books in the rotation as possible to keep the experience varied and my ARod punching desires low.
The book uses animals to count to ten with a little poem accompanying each number. The last four pages review the numbers, cramming all the animals and their accompanying numbers from the earlier pages into tiny lines. This is kind of like a study guide for the book in case I want to start giving Abbie closed-book quizzes about the material in a few months, which I do, assuming she starts talking.
I counted the animals, read the poems, and reached the review section. When I reached “seven ducklings,” Abbie started laughing. As soon as I stopped counting, she stopped laughing. I counted the eight fish, and got the same laughs. Same with the nine geese. The ten nuts weren’t quite as funny, so I returned to the fish and got more laughs.
I really didn’t understand where this laughter was coming from. The drawings were more realistic than silly. I was reading with my normal droll inflection, not some goofy voice. The dog wasn’t running around behind me. She just found something very funny on those pages. Maybe found the punchline to a toddler joke.*** Maybe she was just getting goofy so close to her naptime. Maybe she too thought it was funny the Yankees were out of the playoff already. Regardless, I wish I knew what triggered her hamster to run in the “laugh” direction.
* Those are actual titles from her collection.
** That’s not an actual title from her collection. If it doesn’t exist somewhere, though, I’d be shocked. And I know a good title for a children’s book.
*** Like “Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!” but unknown to anybody old enough to measure their age in years.
posted by Matt at
9:53 PM
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