A Lifetime of Funny

Okay, so you know that road trip we went on last weekend? It required approximately twelve hours of driving. Six there, six back. I know a lot of adults who don’t like being in the car that long, let alone kids.

Before you ask, no, we don’t have a DVD player, portable XBox, Nintendo, or Playstation in our family vehicle. (I know—so archaic!) So what’s a family to do for that many hours? Well, we aren’t completely in living in the stone ages. We do have iPods. But you can only leave those little buds in your ears for so long. We hadn’t gone far before we were chatting, being silly and laughing.

During the drive, I remembered why I write for children. They’re infinitely funnier than most adults, much wiser, and far less jaded.

Take my nine-year old. We’re on the road, driving past lots of billboards. He looks up, sees an advertisement for a casino and, looking puzzled, says, “Two dollar craps? What the…”

He was so serious. So truly confused. I’m still laughing. And I won't even discuss with you the ensuing debate over whether it’s pay or be paid.

Not much later, we passed a sign. Watch for falling rock. My DH pipes up, “When I was a kid, my older brother told me Falling Rock is a lost Native American kid. I spent hours and hours of my life looking for that guy.”

We had a good chuckle over that, but it wasn’t hilarious until the next day. We passed a gray-haired Native American man hiking nearby, and one of the kids shouts, “Hey, I think I found Falling Rock!”

Yeah. We’re a strange bunch. But living life through the eyes of my children gives me a since of wonder and fulfillment that nothing else in my adult life ever could.

Besides, they’ll always keep me laughing.

Not-So-Classic Metaphors

A friend sent me this via email, and I thought it was too cute not to share.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

7. The revelation that his marriage of thirty years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

8. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

9. McBride fell twelve stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

10. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

11. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

12. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

13. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

14. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

15. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

16. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

17. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

18. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

19. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.