Funny Lunchtime Stories

I hope I can re-tell the following so it is as enjoyable for others at is was for me. These things don't always translate well into the written word.

Today at lunch, everything made me laugh.   Perhaps is was my brush with danger while digging John's room out from under his piles of stuff.  Or maybe it was the adrenaline rush from accomplishing such a major feat.  Whatever the cause, I laughed throughout the entire meal.

In order to appreciate the following, you probably should be familiar with Lyrical Life Science CDs.  The producers of this set have made up rhymes for various sciency things and put those rhymes to well-known folk tunes.

For instance (for brevity's sake I'm just including the chorus here, but imagine several verses explaining the scientific method):

The Scientific Method

to the tune of "Dixie"

Chorus:
A way to solve a problem, a way, a way
The scientific method is a way to solve a problem
A way, a way, a way to solve a problem
A way, a way, a way to solve a problem

So getting back to my original story, in the middle of lunch today, quite out of the blue, Joe says, "What's the tune to mitosis?

I look at him like he's a little touched.  After thinking a minute I render a guess, "You mean...from...the...science songs?"

"Yes."

Cosmo Brown and Don Lockwood

From the sideline, I hear Elsie start in with the Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor song from Singin' in the Rain,  "Moses supposes mitoses are roses..."

I was so impressed with her quick wit.  It tickled my funny bone thinking of how mitosis could fit with that song.  The two fellows in sweaters and spats singing about mitosis and tapping around the room.

I couldn't find a video I was able to embed, but you can find that scene here if you need a little smile.

Later the kids were all telling jokes, and as usually happens with this many at the same table, everyone started talking over the top of each other, each wanting to tell the next doozy.  Many of the jokes, as you might imagine, were the kind of silly things small children come up with, which are incredibly funny to them, but maybe not so much so to the parents or older kids.  In at least one instance today, I think the joke ended up being much funnier than the teller intended.

At one point, Stella, who was sitting next to me said, "Mom, I've got a joke for you."

"OK, go ahead,"  I replied.

Stella looked at me and says, "You have to guess."

I had no clue what she was talking about, so I just laughed.  She hadn't told me anything and yet I had to guess.  She was so serious.  Pretty soon, again with everyone talking at once, they pointed out that she was acting something out and she wanted me to guess.

Uncle Rico

She had her hand in a fist, up under her chin, so I first guessed Uncle Rico, from Napoleon Dynamite.  "Well I felt really relaxed. Thanks Deb."

She gave me an exasperated sigh.  "Watch my eyes," she exhorted.

So I watched her roll her eyes around in her head for several minutes, with increasingly exaggerated facial antics as I quite obviously couldn't come up with a single guess as to what she was acting out.

Finally I gave up, which did not please her in the least, and she said in a, "duhhhh" tone of voice, "A bunny, Mom."

Well, I had absolutely no response to that.

After several minutes of giggling, I regained enough control to ask her to explain what resting her chin on her fist and rolling her eyes around in her head had to do with a bunny.

"My hand wasn't part of it.  But it's a snow bunny."

Huh?  "I'm sorry, honey, I don't get it."

"You know, when they die, they do that with their eyes."

More giggles.

"Oh, you mean when Daddy hunts jackrabbits in the snow, like the picture we have of Louisa and Matt holding up their rabbits?"

I'm quite sure I perceived another, "Duhhh,"  when the old light bulb finally came on for me.

But I was thoroughly amused by the entire episode.  At each step of the interchange, I was giggling and chuckling and laughing out loud. I couldn't help it.  I'm still laughing as I type this up.