Three years ago, I had the opportunity to witness the acquisition of skills vis-a-vis jokes. Young Jack, then three years old, made a huge semantic leap forward by learning the form of the riddle. Question? Answer. The form he had down pat. The content was less certain. Generally, his riddles consisted of questions followed by nonsense answers, and much giggling on his part.
Then, at age 4, he took another leap forward, and figured out that in addition to the question/answer format, the content actually had to make sense. And be funny.
This led to his first successful telling of a joke, which actually elicited a laugh out loud from me:
Q: What did the lion eat at the restaurant?
A: The waitress.
An amusing joke, only enhanced by its telling by a bright-eyed four-year-old who is equal parts delighted and surprised that you find his joke funny.
So now that Jack's little brother James has passed the three-year-old mark, I guess it's no surprise he, too, has stumbled on joke format. But as you can see from these latest samples, content still eludes him:
Q: What did the chocolate milk say to the white milk?
A: You're not tasty.
Q: What did the dark say to the light?
A: You're too bright.
Q: What did the Halloween thing say to Santa Claus?
A: You're Christmas.
Q: What did the apple cider say to the chocolate milk?
A: Lone Ranger and Tonto.
Watch this space for future developments.
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