“Hey,” says Ty, during a lull in the table talk, apropos of nothing, “today when I was playing with W. and H., H. said ‘technical’ instead of ‘tentacle.’”
He doesn’t explain the significance of tentacle, or what the kids were playing that would involve tentacles, nor do I stop long enough to ask. Instead, out pops, “Well, at least he didn’t say ‘testicle.’” This from my mouth, not my eight-year-old’s mouth, the mouth—his, I mean—that somehow, every evening, always at the dinner table, veers into what we call (what most families call) Potty Talk. (Not that my comment equals potty talk, mind you, but one glance between adults tells me Curt knows as well as I do the line between body parts and all things scatological is razor thin. And, frankly, I’m done with hearing about poop while I’m eating my dinner.)
Ty chuckles, just as I expect him to, and on the heels of my declaration, Curt trots out a quick joke, a play on words he thinks Ty will enjoy: “So there’s this old guy in a hospital gown sprinting down the hall away from a nurse who’s chasing him with a pair of scissors in her hands. And the doctor behind her says, ‘No, nurse, I said slip off his spectacles.’”
We all laugh, and then Ty cocks his head. “Slip off his spectacles?” He knows he’s missing something.
“It’s a rhyming thing,” I explain. “What does ‘slip’ rhyme with?”
Ty shrugs his shoulders.
“What do scissors do?” I ask.
“Snip?”
“Right. Now, what rhymes with spectacles?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were we talking about earlier?”
“Testicles?”
“Right.”
Ty cants his head to the left, studying me as his mind replays the joke. And then he begins to giggle. I have to laugh, too, because I can see he’s getting the joke.
“Wait,” he says, amid his giggles. “What’s a testicle?” Now I really laugh because how can he not remember? He learned this way back when he was three or so and pondering those marble-like body parts in the tub. So I tell him again. His eyes light up—this is his kind of conversation—and he dissolves into giggles as the full meaning of the joke hits him. He giggles and giggles and giggles, his laughter bubbling out uncontrollably, and then we’re all laughing because Ty’s laughter is just so funny and sweet, and, as Leah points out, laughing is contagious. Who cares how you get there?