A Little Poop Humor

As much as you try parents, you can’t avoid it. You might as well tell the Greenland icecaps to stop melting. Sooner or later you are going to find the key to that creaky old box that holds your childhood memories, blow off the dust, open it up and pull out a few of those old poop jokes that caused you to spit Cap’n Crunch all over your sister at the breakfast table.

Or maybe it’s just me. I read in the Pocket Parent, or rather it was read to me by my wife after interrupting my own reading of Terry Pratchet for the fifth time, that one technique parents have adopted is to take one night off from discipline and let the children reprimand them for bad behavior. The parents play with their food and belch, and probably make other bodily noises I imagine, and the kids run out of breath laughing so hard.

My wife resisted it for a couple years. It started when I came home with a volume of Captain Underpants books. My wife put her foot down, and the books went into the darkest recesses of the catch-all closet. We gave it to Jackson for his sixth birthday, and now, every night before bed, Jackson and I read them together.

If you can handle a little potty humor, these books push the silly button for a young boy. The author Dav Pilkey is like Tom Hanks in Big, who is a young boy in a man’s body. This guy remembers what it was like.

Some people won’t like these books because the heros are two young boys who cause trouble, always pranking. They get in trouble with their principal Mr. Krupp, so they hypnotize him with a hypno-ring. Now every time Mr. Krupp hears the snapping of fingers, he becomes Captain Underpants. Later he acquires actual super powers by drinking Super Power Juice found in the cockpit of the space ship of alien invaders. Sounds silly? You bet. That’s why the kids love it. My son laughs so hard that he falls into choked silence for long stretches and his mouth wide open.

Last night we read this joke:

Why did Tigger stick his head in the toilet?
Because he was looking for Pooh.

And:

Knock knock?
Who’s there?
I’m a pile-up.
I’m a pile-up who?
That’s not true; don’t be so hard on yourself.

Jackson is still laughing.