I found myself, today, yelling towards the back seat, “If you don’t stop being funny, I’m going to put you to bed as soon as we get home.”
It was not my finest moment.
There was stunned silence from the back and then a whisper, “We’re going to get into trouble for being funny?”
Even in my frenzied state, I recognized the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. But I’d drawn a line in the sand.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “You can’t be funny.”
“Are we supposed to be boring?”
“Totally boring. In fact,” I said, flipping on the blinker and trying to calculate how much longer our errands would take and if a fast food dinner was in our future, “I want you to be so dull, you put each other to sleep.”
Silence met my pronouncement.
“But,” Joseph said slowly, “we don’t know how to be dull.”
“Talk about boring things.”
“Like what?”
“Math. Talk about math.”
“I like math.”
“Then talk about snails.”
“Snails are cool.”
“I don’t know what you should talk about. Just make it boring.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror to see nearly identical frowns of concentration on my two red heads.
For two minutes there was blissful silence as I ran down the list in my head. And then…
“Let’s talk about bananas!”
Elizabeth giggled.
Joseph snorted.
“Bananas, bananas, bananas,” they sang, erupting into giggles.
I groaned, wondering why they couldn’t have found another subject. Something truly boring. Like prescription refills.
That groan was, of course, followed by a healthy dose for wanting them to stop laughing and be boring little statues for five minutes.
Am I alone? Has anyone else been driven crazy by laughter?
