I thought I had a few more years before this started

A few months ago I was talking about fruit with Liza, and I tried to teach her the old banana/orange knock-knock joke. She would laugh when I said it, but she got the joke wrong every single time she tried to tell it. Okay, I thought, time to move that to the back burner.

Then Tuesday, out of nowhere, she turns to me in the grocery store and says,
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
Banana who?
(giggles) Knock knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
Banana who?
(giggles and snorts) Knock knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
Banana who?
(bursts out laughing) Knock knock!
Who's there?
Orange!
Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!? (would have rolled on the floor if she hadn't been strapped in the shopping cart)

I think it's safe to say that she heard somebody else telling a knock-knock joke in the past few days, because if not, her recollection is downright scary.

After about 15 repetitions of that one - when I was chastised if I didn't laugh uproariously at each punchline - she wanted me to teach her another joke. Now, I once had a teaching assistant in a chemistry lab who gave us extra credit if we turned in jokes with assignments, and in my eagerness to overachieve I amassed what may have been the largest collection of blonde jokes in the world (in 1993), but Tuesday I drew a blank. The only things I could think of were blonde jokes and Polish jokes, neither of which belong on the preschool circuit. Don't laugh - how many of you can come up with a decent, preschool-appropriate joke on demand?

So I copped out and taught her the always reliable "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!" which she thought was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She told me that one about 10 times, and then she started making up her own version. My personal least favorite was "Why did the chicken trip and squish the other chicken all over the ground? Because it didn't like the other chicken!" At least that one sort of made sense ... I got to hear plenty of "Why did the chicken cross the road? Orange!" variations, which was interesting only because you could actually see her trying to figure out why the original jokes were funny.

I found yesterday that there are a wealth of kid-friendly jokes online, so I've been teaching her a new one when she asks (thank you, google!). But if you've got any good ones you'd like to share, hit me with them. I can only teach her chicken jokes and elephant jokes for so long :)