Have you heard the one about...

I miss the nights when we sit down and have a family meal. They are one of my favorite times of the week. Between baseball, soccer, and other commitments, sometimes days will go by without a dinner with all of us present.

A typical meal begins with my daughter saying the prayer. At four and a half years old, I swear she has a hotline to Jesus. Usually her prayers go something like this: “God is great, God is good, and God, we just want you to know, we love you more than anything. More than the flowers, more than the trees, more than the bushes, more than the bushes with flowers, more than the trees with flowers. We love you so much. And we just know it, so we want you to know it too. Amen.” Sometimes she goes on and on about foliage, wildlife, friends and more until we have to encourage her to wrap it up before the food gets cold.

Last week the boys were on a roll, telling really horrible un-PC jokes at dinner such as, Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive? Answer: Because she was a woman. Or this one: What’s the smartest thing a woman ever said? A man once told me… From there it just got worse—much worse—and I made them reel it in a bit until their sister excused herself from the table. There are some things she doesn’t need to share at preschool.

This morning it was evident that my daughter has a way to go before matching her brothers’ joke-telling abilities. We were snuggling together in bed:

She: I have a knock-knock joke to tell you about a monkey, but it’s not funny.
Me: Let’s hear it.
She: Knock-knock.
Me: Who’s there?
She: Monkey.
Me: Monkey, who?
She: Hey, monkey, why’d you put me in a cage?
Me: That’s not very funny.
She: I told you it wasn’t.

Good sport that I am, I laughed anyway.