Nope, this isn't a snarky review of either the movie or the book. It's more or less a letter to my son and to some extent other parents. The subject is shared humor.
My nine year old son is one heck of a funny guy; I think extraordinarily so.
Take the title of this post, for example. We were discussing the possibility of going to see the new Harry Potter movie, including weighing my son's disgust at sitting through so much snogging we'd heard about, versus cool magic and monsters and danger. It naturally led to making fun of the series (Snogwarts, of course), and the corruption of the title to "Harry Potter and the Half-Ton Prince." Alex quickly voiced the spell that goes horribly wrong, "Humongous Rapidous!", which inflates Harry into a half-ton mass of rotundity, with mere stubs for arms and legs. His little wand hand flails madly but ineffectively, shrinking everything in sight except Harry, because he can't aim it back at himself. Now Harry is even larger, relative to everything else. Much giggling and riffing followed.
Another example comes from when we were watching an episode of "Batman: Brave and the Bold" together. I don't recall the particulars (maybe Baby Face was involved), but at one point Batman is commenting about where he must go to find the clues he needs and he says, "To the source of all the festering evil in Gotham." At which point my son and I simultaneously blurt, "My butt!" Laughter took over, leaving breathing a distant second.
I won't even go into our discussion of World War II Japanese snipers hiding in the pants of U.S. Marines, except to say that they were crack shots. (Alex's observation.)
The point being, kind of obviously, is that joking with your son or daughter is truly one of the greatest gifts of life, just like reading with them, and it doesn't cost you a dime. Now, pass the Whoopie cushion.
No comments:
Post a Comment