Scene: Harriet�s bathroom. AJ is in the bathtub playing with a small red pickup truck.

AJ: Hey, Mommy!
Harriet: Hey, AJ!
AJ: No, Mommy! I wrote a poem about my truck.
Harriet: You did? Let�s hear it!
AJ:

I�m a Saturn.
I�m a pattern.
I�m better than anyone.
You fool everyone.

* * * * *

Life with AJ requires a certain ability to accept that many of your conversations will be surreal. AJ�s surrealism, though, rather than mocking the serious things he�s wrestling with tend to be the result of some kind of misunderstanding, the failure to comprehend trappings of the adult world.

This tendency is most evident in AJ�s jokes, which amuse him greatly but leave the rest of us scratching our heads.

AJ: What did the milk say to the orange juice?
Harriet: I don�t know. What did the milk say to the orange juice?
AJ: You�re orange and I�m flight. Get it? Because he�s about to go for a plane ride.

AJ understands the structure of the joke � the knock-knock, the what-did-the-inanimate-object-say-to-the-other-inanimate-object joke, etc. He also is beginning to understand the idea of puns � he picked flight because it rhymes with white, which is the equivalent of orange. But he can�t quite figure out how it hangs together. He can�t figure out what it is that makes a joke funny. This is probably because he finds nearly everything funny and also because he really doesn�t understand what his parents think is funny. He�s desperate to figure it out, though.

It used to be that when we�d laugh at something he did or said, he�d keep trying to make us laugh, as if he was conducting a scientific experiment on humor. He�d repeat and repeat and change small things to see if we still laughed. Lately, however, he�s feeling left out when we laugh and he doesn�t get it. He gets indignant and always think we�re laughing at him. He wants so much to be taken seriously. But honestly, it�s extremely hard to take an indignant four-year-old seriously. He crosses his arms, stomps his foot on the floor and shouts, �Hmph!� He is the picture of righteous indignation in miniature. We try hard not to laugh. �It�s not a joke, Mommy!� We try to assure him we�re taking him seriously, but the harder we try, the more we tend to laugh and the madder AJ gets � understandably so.

It is a conundrum.

But for now, I must put surrealism aside in favor of reasoned and rational thought. Tomorrow I�m heading into town to meet with my advisor (twice in one week! Is the world coming to an end?) and take my transcription exam, which I sincerely hope I will ace and which will, in any event, allow me to spend a couple of hours listening to Irish music. In a brilliant maneuver of relay parenting, the husband and I will pass the AJ baton at the train station upon my return while he races off to a theater production he�s covering for a client. With any luck, AJ will tell me jokes all the way home.

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