The kids are still funny

Well, at least these children are.  Actually, I think that all children are quite funny, if we listen closely.  I spend almost all of my waking hours in the presence of one or more of our six kids.  Sarah, at two and half, has already demonstrated a developing sense of humour, if only through the use of facial expressions (especially her eyebrows).

Isaac has the wildest imagination of the bunch, to the point that I often wonder if he understands that his imagination is not actually reality.  (I am not well-versed enough in child psychology to fully understand the realm of the imagination and reality in Isaac's age-set.  I imagine that it is quite blurred.)  On that note, I have stopped counting the number of times his paternal grandfather has solved small domestic problems by shooting a gun with Isaac's help.  Recently we had to take Isaac in hand over his imaginative use of artillery.  For example, Hannah tells me that on the way to school she and her siblings passed a police car stopped at a house.  The policeman was outside of his car talking with the owner of the home.  Isaac, without thought to authority, yelled out, "What are you doing?"  The policeman donned his friendly, community-minded face and called back, "Hey, little buddy, on your way to school?"  To which Isaac, thankfully just out of earshot, replied, "I'm going to shoot you!  Bang!  Bang!" Hannah, in great haste, grabbed his hand before it began to fire, and yelled out with a smile fixed on her gentle face, "He said, 'I'm going to school!  Bye!  Bye!"  Later, when I asked Isaac about the encounter, he told me that the policeman was stealing the house owner's baby and Isaac needed to stop the evil policeman.

Benjamin, usually without intention, is quite the humourist.  The four oldest arrived home from school a few weeks ago yelling at me simultaneously that they had taken first place in the Legion Remembrance Day poster and poetry contest.  Except for Ben.  Ben traipsed in the door with an angry and resentful look.  He mumbled that he thought that maybe the contest judges had decided that Ben was in favour of war due to the significant presence of artillery and planes dropping bombs detailed on his poster.  I left it at that until later in the evening when I asked him if I could see the offending poster.  He pulled it out of his bag and unrolled the poster board.  In fact, there were numerous airplanes dropping bombs onto two graveyards:  one filled with tombstones and the other with crosses and poppies.  Separating the cemeteries was a giant malformed peace sign looming ominously in the background.  (Symbolic of a failed peace accord?)  However, the giant caption hastily written across the top of the poster provided the key to Ben's failure to place in the contest.  In eight-year-old-boy bubble letters, it read, "There (sic) still There!". Through my laughter, I asked him what he could have possibly meant by such a slogan.  He explained that he was trying to convey the message that the soldiers, while dead and in their graves, are still with us in heaven.  A noble concept, I thought.  I couldn't resist suggesting that he enter the same poster next year with a different slogan:  Still Haven't Moved!


And to finish this off:  Jacob.  On the weekend, Jacob looked over my shoulder and found me accidentally having clicked on that ad for the seventy-year-old grandma who, through some at-home technique, had shaved thirty years off her age and now looks forty.  (You know the one.)  Without missing a beat, I heard Jacob tell Hannah, "Mom's looking at that grandma who looks forty.  I guess she wants to look ten."  Seven, Jacob, I still have three years to go...
Enjoy your day.