Say Something Funny!

You know, the command “Say something funny!” really is a lot of pressure!  When it comes from my excited 5 year old daughter who has insanely high expectations of me, it’s even more so!  I mean, I think I’m a pretty funny person.  Sometimes it's even intentional!  (Usually it just happens to me, and I figure it out afterwards, but that’s just the way it goes.) Oh and just for the record, I agree with my five year old.  When someone tells her they’re not laughing at her but with her, she usually points out that she’s not laughing.  Just sayin’, people.  Fortunately for me, her idea of funny usually includes me making weird voices for her various stuffed animals and then having them do silly thing, which it turns out I’m pretty darned good at!  No one does silly like the Queen does silly!

This turned out to be a life saving skill the other night at dinner.  MPH actually talked me into going to a pizza place that is NOT my favorite on that particular night.  So right off the bat you can already see where this little episode is all his fault... as is anything else that annoys, bothers or inconveniences me in any way... and anything that annoys, bothers or inconveniences him even if it appears to have been my fault.  This is one of the perks of being the Queen, naturally.  Anyway!  So off we go to said pizza place which I graciously stated that I was willing to give another chance.  Needless to say, things went down hill from there.  Let's start out by saying that I've never been told by a restaurant that the coupon I handed them was forged... until that night.  Who exactly bothers to make a forged coupon.  They didn't imply that I had done it, but rather than the big book of restaurant coupons that were printed up and sold to support the local school system had apparently been forging coupons.  

Let's pause here, people.  Public service announcement time!  BEWARE!  Disreputable producers of coupon books are the new scourge of our public school system!  Forgery is rampant!  I'm pretty sure they're fronting and laundering money for the mob!  Likely this is another Nigerian scam!  I gave them my bank account info and they cleaned me out!  The land I bought was swampy!!!!  No... hang on... that's not right... Yeah, I bought a big book of coupons that I've enjoyed just as I've done for years but this pizza place (national chain, peeps) assures me that these coupons are forgeries.  Yeah, someone's been in the back sniffing the glue and having a grand ole time.  Now let's move on.

Anyway, we move on beyond the counterfeit coupon incident and order our pizza.  We're talking a cheese pizza here.  It's not rocket science or some weird concoction of ingredients that requires anyone to go out and create a new plant species then grow and harvest it for them to smack it onto my pizza.  Unfortuantely, I think doing that might have been quicker.  In fact, cloning and growing my own pterodactyl then teaching it to make pizza might have been quicker.  There might even be an app for that!  It's too bad that I didn't spend my evening doing that.  Instead, I sat there for over 45 minutes waiting for a cheese pizza with three little girls all under the age of 10 who were BORED!  This... is a BAD thing.

It didn't take long at all for the dreaded whine of "I'm booooooooored" to leave the lips of my otherwise delightful monster of a five year old.  This child is a drama queen.  She is impatient.  She is demanding.  She is decidedly intolerant to anything that inconveniences her for even a second.  She expects her every whim to be catered to.  THIS child... is definitely mine.  And she was not happy.  So I did what any self respecting mother would do.  I grabbed the stuffed Moshi Monster she'd just gotten (Don't ask me, people!  I don't really know what it is, and I certainly didn't name it that!  Now that I think about it, neither did she.  She named it Carley, of course.) and I proceeded to make up one of those annoying cartoon type voices for it and do any ridiculous thing I could come up with just to make her laugh and entertain her.  Moshi gave kisses!  Moshi ranted against the establishment that would make her wait for her cheese pizza!  Moshi sang the Black Eyed Peas while the people at the next table stared at me horrified!  (Suffice it to say that the Queen's singing voice at the best of times is best heard while wearing ear plugs.  Singing in a high pitched voice doesn't help it at all.)  Yes, dear readers and loyal subjects, it was make Mommy act like a fool night at the pizza place all so my five year old would spend 45 minutes laughing instead of shrieking like a banshee with a hang nail for that same period of time.  And it worked!  As I began to tire and run out of material, however, and yes it does happen, she would smile delightedly at  me and say those dreaded three words "Say something funny!"  

It turns out that those three words should be patented and used as a weapon by my way of thinking.  Suddenly having funny demanded was like shutting off a switch in my brain.  I felt curiously compelled to manually calculate the square root of pi.  I considered reciting the Gettysburg Address from memory for her.  I thought of explaining the entire IRS code for income tax calculation!  Alright, not really. I made that last one up.  But the rest were viable options!!!  I was in trouble!  And then it came to me!  It was like a light at the end of the tunnel.  I know funny!  I still have it!  All is not lost!... So Moshi sang a different Black Eyed Peas song and life moved on.  Thankfully the long awaited cheese pizza showed up soon afterwards.

One day I'll explain that funny does not come on command to my daughters.  Until then though, it's kind of nice to have them think that I can still do anything at all for them.  Mom is still Super Mom.  Long may it last.  At the end of the day as I was putting them to bed, they all asked me to put extra love into their stuffed animals.  This involves me loudly hugging and squeezing each of their chosen animals so they'll have their own storage unit of love if they wake up lonely in the night.  The littlest wanted that but she wanted something extra as well.  Her chosen stuffed animal was Moshi, and she specifically requested that "funny love" be added to hers.  It took me a bit to stumble on what she meant by that, and I was assured quickly that my first attempts at this were completely wrong... in a loud voice, but then I got it.  So with one more Peas song Moshi and the girls were put to bed and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Thankfully, it was a particularly funny sigh... or so I assure them.

(One last thought.  To Allen Briggs, a former high school classmate and friend, who was taken from us far too early on Sunday:  You left footprints, my friend, and I am proud to have seen them and to have known you.  Thank you.  You will always be missed.)