Hey, Hairy Man!

  Hairy Man cartoon 
  Originally uploaded by Garrett2.

Thanks to public school kindergarten, which has whetted my child's appetite for writing her own stories and gags, that whole pall of minor controversy that hangs over the parental blog -- How much should one draw from the life of one's child to provide material for your writing? -- has been deftly resolved by simply putting the responsibility for my blog's content directly into the hands of my daughter.

We had been talking a few weeks ago about the New Yorker cartoon caption contest and she decided to try her hand at a couple. She has not yet won anything, but we have had some productive conversations about the theoretical underpinnings of humor -- ambiguity, irony (dramatic, Socratic), the juxtaposition of disparate rhetorical elements, etc. -- and she has proven a quick study. In some cases she even sees beyond the constrictions of convention, as with the dialog she proposed as a caption for the first cartoon included here:

"Hairy Man!"

"What, Hairy Man?"

"You're so hairy, I can't see where you're going."

The ambiguity of language is also handled nicely (though perhaps owing a small debt of inspiration to the winning caption) in her proposal for the Mr. Potato Head walks into a bar piece included here:

"If I start looking too funny, just take off my eyes."

[i.e., "Af I s[t]or locan to fane jas tac of my izs."]

I am happy that she takes the task of humor seriously, though as with many five-year-old kids it is unintended humor that sometimes proves more satisfying, viz. this example collected in the field from one of our neighbor kids:

"Knock knock!" he said.

"Who's there?" I answered.

"A ghost!"

"A ghost who?!"

"You don't have to cry about it!"

Silence.

"Uh, wait!" he said. "I mean 'Boo!'"

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