Sunday, February 24, 2008

It's a funny world

You know, sometimes the simplest of things can seem hugely funny. Like whispering 'Do you want any marmalade?'. OK, doesn't seem funny to you (or to me, to be sure) but it had my friend in tears of laughter last night.

Humour - a very personal thing don't you think? But, then again, humour is not always jokes, or situations, or events, but just looking at something with the right frame of mind.

A couple of weekends ago some of the guys I know went to Belgium to play at a festival. On the way back Kevin texted Guido 'On the train now'. Well, Guido was four cars behind him in the queue, so he knew he wasn't. When challenged, Kevin said 'Well, I'd have been on the train by the time you received the text. It's called predictive texting.'

That, I would call wit. But there's some really cringe-worthy stuff I've been thinking about too - mostly to do with 'Mother'. My mother is not the most tactful of ladies (and, darn it, I've inherited some of that 'speak first, think later' attitude, I regret). For example!

Mother: "Are your family all large too?"

Friend: .... amazingly, she was not rude in reply!

Mother - on seeing one of our friends for first time in years, first thing she says is: "You are on Thorazine too?"

Mother, when sitting next to my gay friend: "I've... never sat next to someone... from Israel before." (PHEW!)

Mother (to me): "You were so skinny as a child. I never thought you'd turn out f.."

Children come out with the most amazing wit too, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. When my son was very small, I saw him jumping up and down in the garden. "I can't reach it!" he said, frustrated. "What?" said I, concerned mother. "The sky."

And a friend's child, watching me breastfeed my daughter many years ago, asked what I was doing: "giving the baby milk," I explained. She looked serious. "What's in the other one?"

Ah, the things kids say and do. But best of all is the faux pas... but maybe I'll save them for another post.