the highest compliment

I read Ivar my blog post about Hattie's dirty diaper of fun and he laughed so hard he could hardly catch his breath. It was such a joy. When I read that she said, "no, no, poopie, no, no" he about fell out of his chair. When I was all done he asked me who had written that and I said I had. And he wondered how I knew how to say those words in that way so that the story was so funny.

We had a really awesome conversation about the joy of words, and how fun it is to get to use them in different ways to make people laugh. He said he wanted to memorize my whole blog post so he could tell the story that funny. And that led to a conversation about humor. I told him he didn't need to memorize how I wrote it, but if there was a funny group of words, or a funny line or two, he could use those when he told the story on his own. I told him about how I listened to Grandpa Paul tell lots of funny stories when I was growing up, and noticed how he would change his voice at some parts, or slow down his words and how it takes a little practice to figure out how to set up a joke.

I also remember sitting in Ms. Groves 10th grade English and History class everyday and listening to her opening stories telling about something funny that had happened the night before. And I took notes. That's no lie. I remember writing down phrases and then retelling her stories until I figured out how to use her funny lines in my own material. Ivar said he is going to listen to Uncle Kyle and cousin Jack to learn how to be funny.

Anyways, to have this conversation with my 6-and-a-half-year-old made me so excited for all that is to come as he learns how to play with words. He is writing a story right now called Squeeker and Croak. I'm writing down exactly what he tells me to and this story is awesome. He's got a great imagination in there and I absolutely love that I get a front row seat watching his stories and writing and joke telling develop. He's definitely on the right track.