Poop as a punch line
Let’s do a quick exercise, it’s called “What happens when people discover that I have a four year old.” It goes something like this:
Person 1: So, do you have any kids?
Me: I do, L is four years old.
Person 2: Oh girls are so much easier than boys.
Person 1: And they’re so much less gross.
Person 2: All my nephew/son/weird kid from down the street that keeps hanging out on my sidewalk does it tell fart jokes.
Me: Um… I need to grab another beer.
We as a culture seem to have gotten held up in this idea that boys are rough and generally disgusting and little girls are so dainty that just hearing a fart would make them blush. How very American nostalgia for circa 1950, right? I thought that this was a kind of antiquated idea and that we were past gross generalizations based on gender, so I’m still kind of surprised every single time someone makes this kind of horribly unfounded and just completely untrue preconception of boys and girls. L is far from the classical description of a “tomboy” (girl has a box of princess dress up that’s bigger than my personal wardrobe), but she definitely isn’t one to shy away from rolling around in the dirt, getting greasy helping dad fix a bike, or the occasional (read frequent) poop joke.
So to help us all advance past this archaic notion of the inherent delicateness of little girls I humbly present a list of things that my precious little princess has Weird Al Yankovic’d to include the word poop. Because poop is inherently the funniest thing any child has ever heard.
Three times L used poop as a punchline
- Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” is now “Poopy Face.” As in “my my my poopy face. my my poopy face.” Yeah, Sinatra she’s not.
- The amazingly talented illustrator of the Fancy Nancy series (one of Lena’s favorite books, all the way through the new chapter books) — got renamed for a classic Lena knock-knock joke.
L: Knock, knock
B: Who’s there?
L: A book.
B: A book who?
L: A book of Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, written by Jane O’ Conner and illustrated by Robin Preiss Poop. - Then there’s the crowd favorite — Doc McPoop. No story, no joke, just walks up to you and yells Doc McPoop.
Little girls are more than able to throw down in the disgusting department with the grossest little boy. This is why, when I hear that someone has a child between the ages of three and oh, fourteen, I ask “Heard any good poop jokes lately?” Doesn’t always win you a friend, but I only want to be friends that I can commiserate with anyway.
