My Daughter Made Me Proud Today

[AndyC]

OK, she has a lot of accomplishments to be proud of, but today, she showed a remarkable understanding of the so-bad-it's-good style of humour at not quite five years old. I've never even tried to explain it to her.

We were watching Balamory this morning, and one of the things on this Scottish kids' show that cracks me up is the way the adult characters seem totally clueless while solving problems at the level of the target audience or setting up some activity for the preschoolers on the show. Today, it just happened to tickle me more than usual, because they played a game that involved identifying a mode of transportation from an extreme closeup photo of one part of it.

But the setup involved a whole story about two main characters, Edie McCredie and Miss Hoolie, returning from a vacation in Greece and showing everyone their holiday photos. Miss Hoolie took pictures of a car, a boat, a bus, a donkey and a couple of other things, while Edie opted to photograph all the same things so close you could barely tell what they were, because the details interested her. And through the guessing game, we see scenes of Greece and get a description of all the things they saw while using each mode of transportation. I usually don't mock kids shows in front of Ro, but I couldn't help myself and started full-out riffing in a faux Scottish falsetto.

"And we saw the Acropolis!"

Me: "We didn't take a picture of it, but look at this lovely hubcap."

"And the mountains there are beautiful!"

Me: "I really wish we'd taken a picture, but we only had enough film for five shots each."

(We are shown a shot of nothing, with a donkey's ass peeking in from one side.)

Me: "And I thought this donkey's butt was particularly interesting. I stayed there waiting for him to poop, but I just couldn't get a picture of it."

And I honestly had Ro in stitches. She completely understood how ridiculous the episode was, and the riffing cracked her up. I was so proud.

[retrorussell]

Cool.  Maybe you can teach her the fine art of riffing and have your very own MST3K sessions together.  What a great bonding experience that would be!

[Silverlady]

What a great experience for you Andy, and for your little girl.  I can almost bet she will remember this her entire life.  It's like a "snapshot" in time.

I can still remember being around 4 or 5 and playing "lion" with my dad. I remember crawling all over him, riding on his back while he pretended he was a ferocious lion. And that was a long long time ago. 

[AndyC]

I went to tell this story to my wife last night, and as I was explaining the Balamory episode, my wife asked "Is this the one about the donkey's butt?"

Apparently, Ro had so much fun, she shared the story with Mom while I was at work, and the two of them joked about it too. My wife brought in comparisons to Ro's own experiments in photography. She likes to photograph the dogs, but they don't often sit still for her, so she's taken lots of photos of a dog's butt. So the two of them had a good laugh at the idea of Ro accompanying Edie and Miss Hoolie to Greece, allowing for greater variety of animal butt photos.

Wish I'd been there to hear that.

Ro's sense of humour is developing by leaps and bounds. She definitely knows something funny when she sees or hears it. She just needs to get a better grasp on why things are funny, and how to make her own jokes. She's been experimenting a lot, getting in on whatever joking around the grownups are doing, and trying to say funny things herself. Once in a while, she says something that makes us laugh, and that causes her to explore it further - repeating the joke, changing it up a little, figuring out what she said that made us react. I think she's already figuring out that repeating the same joke will not get her as good a reaction as it did the first time.

She's going to be a funny girl. No doubt about it.

[Chainsawmidget]

That's great, Andy. 

[Trevor]

She likes to photograph the dogs, but they don't often sit still for her, so she's taken lots of photos of a dog's butt.

She's going to be a funny girl. No doubt about it.

I have a feeling that one of these days she'll be on here, chatting with all us old toothless curmudgeons about what we all share a passion for. 

[AndyC]

I just had to revive this thread. We watched Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass this weekend. This would be the two-part network TV "event" that aired around 1985. Probably one of the last of those big network specials loaded with current TV personalities and aging stars of yesteryear. Stylistically, it almost has more of a late-70s feel to it.

It also had scary parts. In particular, the Jabberwocky kept making appearances in the second half. It was a guy in a fairly impressive, and vicious-looking dragon suit.

Two things really impressed me about Ro's reaction. First, she thought the Jabberwocky was scary, but she seemed to enjoy watching it. There's a moment where it suddenly pops out of a box, which was a jolt for all of us, but I noticed that Ro's initial shock gave way to laughter. Up to now, I've been trying to explain to her why many grownups like movies that scare them, that scary can be fun. I think she understands now.

Second, and perhaps most impressive, was her follow-up analysis, including a five-year-old's dissertation on what would happen if the Jabberwocky fought Godzilla.

I have some of the strangest "proud papa" moments.

[Doggett]

Second, and perhaps most impressive, was her follow-up analysis, including a five-year-old's dissertation on what would happen if the Jabberwocky fought Godzilla.

Well...?
C'mon, what would happen ?

I'm on Godzilla's side. 

[Flangepart]

Me too. You got a smark kiddo there, papasan.  

Wooo...I'd love to see Godzilla as writen by Lewis Carrol.
"Beware the great Godzilla, son. The flame that burns, the tail to smash."
"Behold they awsome day he killede, the fearsom Anglisnatch."

[AndyC]

Well...?
C'mon, what would happen ?

I'm on Godzilla's side. 

It was kind of hard to follow, but the gist of it was that Godzilla would win. And that was in an equal fight, not taking the size difference into account. She sees it as a guy in a suit vs. a guy in a suit. Whether they're eight feet tall or two hundred feet depends on whose movie they're in.

The outcome was not surprising. Ro likes Godzilla, and thinks the Jabberwock is scary.

She is a funny kid when it comes to monsters. She was recently scared by an illustration in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, of a kid bandaged from head to toe because of yellowjacket stings. She thought it looked scary. I agree that there was a mildly disturbing quality to the image, but it really bothered her, and not because she empathized with the kid. Purely visual. On the other hand, during the big Toho vs. Lewis Carroll exercise, I casually mentioned that the Jabberwock in the movie looked a bit like a one-headed King Ghidorah. Ro then surprised both her mother and me by disagreeing on the grounds that Ghidorah is CUTE. Go figure.

You know, Ro has never actually seen a whole Godzilla movie. I've just shown her some of the fight scenes from the sillier ones, like G vs. Monster Zero and G vs. Megalon. I wonder how she'd do with a whole movie. My main concern is with her being bored by the scenes without monsters, since they often get very talky and technical. I was thinking Gamera vs. Guiron would be good, except that in spite of being about 90% kid friendly, it throws in a bunch of blood and dismemberment and cannibalism.

[Trevor]

Have you ever told your daughter about the other famous Ro in that other particular movie, Andy?

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Have you ever told your daughter about the other famous Ro in that other particular movie, Andy?

You mean Ro-Man from Robot Monster?

I remember my 7 year old cousin watching that one with me and her father and she  laughed herself silly at Ro-Man.  Why?  It tickled her pink that a gorilla wore a diving helmet and went around shaking his fist all the time.  That was a fun day for all of us. 

[AndyC]

We do sometimes call her Rowie the Robot.

Actually, robots are another thing she likes. I still plan on building a little wheeled rover that will explore the house, as a father-daughter project. Nice, simple robot - two motors, a driver IC, a microcontroller and a couple of sensors, plus whatever embellishment we want to add. She's seen me tinkering with other projects, and she's pretty keen to try it herself. The only concern I have is that she is a very creative kid, which is a good thing, but she still doesn't quite understand that some things need to be done a certain way in order to work. An electronic project might be helpful in teaching that. I was thinking of getting one of those 200-in-1 project kits for us to play with together. My older brother used to have a 60-in-1 when I was maybe a little older than Ro, and I played with that thing for hours. Nice way to learn, both by following the instructions, and just by fooling around and trying things. I used to love building something according to the instructions, then see what would happen if I changed the value of resistors or capacitors.

Those 60-in-1 projects were among the tamest of my childhood experiments. Quite a few of my other endeavours involved hooking things up to model train transformers, or plugging them into the wall, causing dead shorts, tripping circuit breakers, melting plyers and screwdrivers, etc. I suppose if my dad was more technically inclined and did projects with me, I'd have had a much safer childhood.

[Flick James]

My oldest is 3. He's obsessed with the movie Cars at the moment (well, obsessed with cars in general). But I can't wait until he gets to that age where we can make fun of movies and shows together.

[AndyC]

My oldest is 3. He's obsessed with the movie Cars at the moment (well, obsessed with cars in general). But I can't wait until he gets to that age where we can make fun of movies and shows together.

We've progressed to the point where we feel comfortable expressing our opinions about kids shows around Ro, and openly mocking the ones that are downright goofy. We always did, to some degree, but there was also a sense that we shouldn't be putting down something Ro enjoyed watching when she wouldn't have understood it, and might have thought she was doing something wrong. These days, Ro's sense of humour is developed enough to see the ridiculousness of something, while still enjoying it. Just the other day, my wife declared, in no uncertain terms, that she can't stand Dora the Explorer. Her tone was light, however, and now Ro delights in taunting Mom when Dora comes on. I happily watch Dora, but I do a fair bit of riffing. Ro loves my impression of the Map.