Scene: Driveway of the harriet household. Despite the chilly weather, AJ and harriet have ventured outside so that AJ could try out his new box of sidewalk chalk while harriet surveys the winter�s damage to her garden.

AJ: Look, Mommy, I drew the solar system.

[And indeed, there is a large sun at the center of the driveway with planets orbiting in their correct order, each labeled with its initial].

Harriet: What�s that?

AJ: That�s Jupiter�s big red spot.

Harriet: And what are those?

AJ: Those are sunspots.

Harriet: What�s that on top of Mars?

AJ: That�s the polar ice cap.

Harriet: But what�s that sticking out?

AJ: That�s the pompom.

AJ has acquired a frightening amount of knowledge in the past couple of months. He knows more about the solar system than I do. But I really love that he thought the polar ice cap on Mars should have a pompom. Because his own polar fleece cap has a pompom. Mars would be a lot friendlier place if there were a pompom. Maybe we�d all want to move there.

Last night AJ was punished for some infraction or another by the denial of bath toys. But he had a great time in his bath anyway. He played what he called �The Human Body Game� where he pretended two guys (represented by his fists) were taking a journey through the human body. At one point I overheard him say, �Oh, no! We�re not in the healthy lung. This is the smoker�s lung! Yuck! Let�s get out of here!� This is one of those cases where I want to be happy that AJ is so aware of the evils of tobacco at such a young age that he is already making plans to escape smokers lung. But really, I know that he is under the impression that everyone has two lungs, one healthy, and one smoker�s lung. The reason he thinks this is because of an exhibit we saw at a suburban children�s museum which had side by side pictures of a healthy and a smoker�s lung superimposed on the outline of a single human body. This misunderstanding has been further supported by a couple of books he has that do the same thing, and no amount of instructional correction on my part seems to shake his belief. While it is clear to AJ that smokers� lungs are yucky, he thinks this is something he has to learn to live with.

After his bath, he decided that he wanted to tell riddles. Or, as he put it, �I want to ask you a funny question.� After he'd exhausted his repertoire of two jokes (Q. What�s black and white and read all over? A. A newspaper. And Q. What�s brown and sticky? A. A stick!), he asked us to tell him some. I made the mistake of telling my favorite riddle (which I know I�ve mentioned here before: Q. What�s white and can�t climb a tree? A. A refrigerator). This joke opened up a whole new genre of funny questions for AJ. He struggled to come up with some of his own. Here are some actual examples:

Q. What�s white and can�t climb a television? A. The wall!
Q. What�s silver and can�t turn all the pages of a book? A. The dresser knob!
Q. What�s brown and can�t drive a car? The door!
Q. What's black and can�t shut a door? The night sky!

In each of these cases when, understandably, neither my husband nor I could come up with the correct response, AJ would say, �I�ll give you a hint,� and then, in a stage whisper would tell us the answer: It�s the door!� This would inevitably make me laugh until I cried. Clearly he�s getting the hang of the humor thing. I�m just not sure it�s the way he meant to do it.

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