Sometimes they get a valuable assist form their dad:
Waitress: And what vegetable would you like with that kid’s meal?
Dad to kid: You’ve got to pick a vegetable.
Kid to dad: But why? Its got mayonnaise.
Dad: Mayonnaise isn’t a vegetable, you’re thinking of ketchup.
Kid to waitress: I’ll have ketchup, please.
Dad: I told you to stop doing that, why do you keep doing that?
Kid: Mom keeps telling you to stop washing your balls in the sink and you keep doing it.
Kid: Why can’t we have ice cream for lunch?
Dad: Because mom will be mad if we have ice cream for lunch.
Kid: So?
Dad: Nothing good ever happens when mom is mad.
Kid: Maybe not for YOU.
The first one is really the only one that I think I deserve any particular credit for the assist but the other two got everyone around us trying not to laugh while pointing directly in my face.
So when have you provided a valuable assist to your child saying something that stuns people into silence before they have to sit down from laughing so hard?
Years ago, when my son was four. We had spent a looooong time helping understand words that should not be said outside family settings. We referred to them as “bathroom words.”
So, we finish a lunch out with friends, and stop at the men’s room on the way out. He is in the closed stall; I am at the urinal, so we can’t see each other.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re in a bathroom, right?”
“Yeah…”
“So we can use bathroom words?”
“Sure, I guess”
::long, sharp intake of breath from within the stall::
When my nephew was about three, I was having lunch with him and his folks in the restaurant I was working in at the time.
Nephew pipes up out of nowhere, “Auntie, are you gonna have a baby?” (this was curiosity rather than commentary on my physique, I was slim at the time), which elicited some nervous giggles.
I replied that I was not going to have a baby. Being a three year old, of course he asked WHY???
I told him “Well, for one thing, I don’t have anyone to help me make a baby.”
Nephew loudly announced “I can help you make a baby!!! I have a toolbox, a hammer, a screwdriver…”
LOLz all around. I can’t wait to tell this story at his upcoming wedding.
During the summer, they’d moved into a new neighborhood last year and Grandkid (who was 8) had lots of energy to burn. She told him she was pretty sure there was a park, “up the street.” It was literally towards the top of a rather steep hill, so Grandkid rides his bike about half way up the street, around the block, down the alley, around another block, then comes back to the house. He’s red in the face and sweaty and is breathing heavy, complaining that there wasn’t a park anywhere near the house.
Nothing him breathing heavy, Hallgirl2 asks, “Do you need your inhaler?”
