On Comedy (or, Even Shakespeare Did Fart Jokes)

Not one man who has ever lived, not even Our Lord Himself, got his first laugh from irony or word play. We all of us laugh at silly noises and funny faces as soon as we learn to focus our eyes, if not sooner. I don't clearly recall my own first laugh; prob'ly drunk at the time. But I bet it was at a fart noise. I have a wide array of preposterous facial expressions, and I'm very much looking forward to having a new audience for them. (My wife's sense of humor is a bit more sophisticated than our incoming baby's is likely to be.) What I'm kind of hoping is that the kid will keep finding them funny even when he or she gets old enough to appreciate subtlety and wit.

You probably remember the Lord's remark about entering the Kingdom: "Except ye be as little children," &c. And you may also remember St. Paul's countering observation about becoming a man and putting aside childish things. We all get the distinction between childish and childlike. The tricky thing is that when you're an actual child, you have a not unreasonable tendency to be both. I would hazard to opine that the crucial lesson to impart to a developing mind is simply that there is a time and a place. It is childlike to make faces at your baby to get a giggle; it's childish to do it in the middle of a board meeting.

Polonius was an idiot, but he got one thing right: Brevity is the soul of wit. Everyone sort of knows that timing is the key to comedy, but not everyone really gets that principle in practice. When a kid is about to cry, there's very often a poised, breathless moment in kairos time when you can still calm the tempest if you can find just the right thing to say or do. Might not always work to give him a funny face at that critical instant—and if it doesn't, persistence is unlikely to help once the wailing starts—but it might be precisely the shock of dumb he needs to distract him from his wise and Job-like woes.

Look at that thing. There's no possible theological question that the Three Persons of the Trinity were shaking the Throne of Heaven with laughter when this creature came into the world. It would take a mind grave enough to draw out Leviathan with a hook to ascend to such heights of goofiness. Sometimes we are asked to bear true sorrow and true anguish; other times, we're asked to put up with morning traffic or being out of coffee, and it's just too much of a trial for our souls. Moments like that, when we're really upset about something really trivial, might be the moments for which God gave us the platypus. It's His way of making funny faces at us. You hear the phrase "God's children" every day, "we're all God's children," and of course it's true. But sometimes it helps to remember that we're also His kids.