EJ has taken to the knock-knock joke like a fish to water. Is there a knock-knock joke about fishes and water? If so, she will soon learn it and tell it repeatedly, probably 10 times a minute, minimum.
Since her introduction to them last week, she has become so smitten with a particular knock-knock joke that we have had to ration her use of it, just to protect our sanity. For example, tonight, on our way home from dinner on the north side, Mike found himself in a knock-knock joke negotiation---he would say, "No more while Mommy is driving in this crowded neighborhood" and she would ask, "How about on the highway?" resulting in the "Yes, you can tell the joke again five times (and five times only) once we're on Lakeshore Drive."
The joke she now lives to tell is the classic "interrupting cow," suggested to me by my dear friend, Christina, and memorized in about 10 seconds flat and adopted as her own original material by my daughter. Here it is, for those who don't know it:
EJ: Knock, knock!
Me: Who's there?
EJ: Interrupting Cow!
Me: Interrupting C-
EJ: MOO!
I can't tell you how many times I've been interrupted by this cow, as well as this cow's menagerie of rude, impatient friends, the interrupting duck, the interrupting bird, the interrupting sheep, etc.
Tonight, though, she interrupted her regular pattern and had us in utter amazement and laughing until our sides hurt. After a few rounds of giggly cow jokes, she started saying, "Moo, moo!" I would repeat her, saying, "Moo, moo!" as closely as I could to her expression. She would then say, "No, Mommy, I'm the cow!" I thought this was the game for awhile---figure out which one of us would play the cow in the next telling of her favorite joke---but when I repeated her for the third time and she protested, even more insistently, I finally asked, "EJ, what do you want me to say?" She said, "Who's there! I'm a cow mommy." What happened next was the interrupting cow joke, with me speaking English, and EJ speaking cow.
EJ: Moo, moo!
Me: Who's there?
EJ: Moo moo moo moo moo!
Me: Moo moo mo-
EJ: MOO!
She was speaking cow. COW. Now I'm really regretful we didn't send her to the Lycée Français for preschool.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
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1 comments:
Whoa, sorry about that. I've helped create a monster. Er . . . a moooonster.
When I see her next, I should start telling her that joke, and see if she lets me make it to the punchline, or reverses roles so that she gets to.
Then again, if it has fallen out of favor by then . . . perhaps I ought let it lie, eh?
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