When my nieces and nephews were little they loved to tell riddles and jokes. They would stand in the middle of the room and regale us with silly questions. Usually they read from books with titles like Hilarious Kid Jokes and Knock-Knock Jokes for Children. Why can’t you bend a nickel in half? Change is hard. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Cash. Cash who? No thanks, I prefer almonds.
Sometimes they would attempt to create riddles of their own. These usually involved non sequiturs that even the most comedic genius in the family could not decode. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Elephant. Elephant who? There’s a banana on your head.
As us adults scrunched up our faces and rolled our eyes, the kids would fall to the floor, laughing at a hidden hilarity of the universe that only they could comprehend. I imagine they viewed these sessions as a way to capture our attention. The less we understood, the greater their satisfaction. “Ask us for another one!” they pleaded. We complied, celebrating their originality while also hoping that this time we might actually get the joke.
