Trying Out Material

"Oh brother, not again." They were words I would normally expect from a grown man from another era, but here was a four-year-old saying them while slapping his forehead and grinning ear-to-ear, looking around, apparently for some sort of response.

I was the only one in the vicinity so I asked, "What not again?"

Without missing a beat, he replied, while rolling his eyes, "You don't want to know."

"But I do want to know!"

"Oh man, get with the times!"

Hey, that was one of my lines. The boy was trying out material, like a comedian. I parried, "Oh, believe me, I'm with the times."

He tipped his head, comically peering at me from under his brow, "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

It was like conversing with one of those overly precocious kids from a sitcom of my youth, stringing together cliched phrases that no "real" kid would ever say. Except right now, of course. "Hmm, what should I be sure about?"

He paused, then looked at the sky as if for relief, "Why me!"

That's when I lost it. We laughed together. He was satisfied with himself. Superficial good humor had been his goal. It's a disguise we all put on at times, almost as a courtesy to our fellow humans. Well that's two minutes of my life I'll never get back. Another day in paradise. It's five o'clock somewhere. You don't want to know. They are superficial, slightly sarcastic remarks, said to the room, often spoken in moments of collective tension or concern. They can land badly, seeming callous if spoken at the wrong moment, but often corny levity is just what the moment needs: a reminder to chuckle, to not sweat the small stuff.

This boy was doing what children have always done, imitating the adults in his life, trying out material. He wasn't telling jokes, but rather injecting a kind of we're-all-in-this-together humor, a subtle, complex difference that he was working on understanding.

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