Milestones

I am proud to announce that my three year old has just met his latest development milestone: telling pointless knock-knock jokes.

It is a very important stage in the development of the human mind and parents should be concerned if their child hasn’t reached this milestone before they start school. The joke has to go something like

Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Monkey
Monkey who?
Monkey in your shirt!

 Followed by an uncontrollable fit of the giggles.

 The advanced practitioner will include some toilet humour

 Knock knock
Who’s there?
Bear
Bear who?
Bear poo!

 Then more boundless mirth – a true celebration of this towering achievement of wit and naughtiness.

 Pointless Knock-knock Joke comes along about a year after Hot Potato. A child figures out that mum and dad get angry sometimes for things that he’s done. They don’t like being left holding that particular tuber so they learn to point out that a brother or sister was also doing something naughty. In fact even naughtier which means that the hot potato can be passed up the chain. Listen to the story for long enough and the diversionary – and probably wholly imaginary offence – committed by said sibling will escalate from using naughty words, through pushing me, hitting me all the way up to insider trading in circumstances of special aggravation.

 Again there is an advanced practitioner level of this milestone – recommending a punishment.  The experience, from the parent’s point of view, will be like that scene from The Holy Grail where the righteous citizenry are trying to get Sir Bedevere to burn the witch.

If you’ve ever doubted the in-grained, wholly genetic nature of sibling rivalry, listen to a kid recommending a punishment for a sibling. You can keep your groundings and your withholding of dessert. The minimum mandatory sentence that the court can give is 12 lashes – and that’s for using the s-word. Physical contact requires a minimum sentence of keel-hauling and if there are any bruises or blood evident, the court must pass a sentence of death – and God have mercy on his soul.

 Hopefully sometime soon he'll get to Implied Blasphemous Indignation.  Follow this dialogue:

Bed time.
I can't
Why not?
There's a mess in my cot
What?
Look!
What is it?
Tanies (sultanas)
How did they get there?
They spilled.

Right now I just get direct answers to the question I actually asked;  "How did they get there?" When he reaches this next milestone he'll understand Implied Blasphemous Indignation and will realize that the question I'm asking is "What in God's name possessed you to put sultanas in your cot?" Of course I won't get a sensible answer but at least he might have the decency not to grin about it.

We are confidently, however, looking forward to our young man reaching his next but one milestone, which will be selective deafness - after all, his brothers have well and truly mastered this. As the nascent mind develops, a protective layer forms in the hearing centres of the brain which filters out a list of known provocative and unwelcome words and phrases. These include “washing”, “cleaning”, “shower”, “teeth”, “bed”, “school”, “table” and “volume”. It’s like a parental spam filter. If you listen to a message including any of those words, you’re only going to wind up falling for another scam which ends up with you being taken to the cleaners, or to bed, or to school, or somewhere like that. You can’t afford to waste your precious hearing ability on that kind of thing anyway because, given the volume you’re listening to your tablet at, you’ll need as much as you can get later in life.

And just before he hits school, he’ll put the advanced practitioner icing on that cake and stage mock-indignation scenes when punishment for not-listening-and-doing-as-you’re-told it meted out. Through choking sobs and a waterfall of tears, he will plead his innocence and swear, on his Halo Lego, that he didn’t hear you insisting he have a shower – ten times over a half-hour period and that, therefore, any punishment is at a level of injustice only previously experienced by the freedom loving citizens of Tiananmen Square.