Having a sense of humour is a funny thing. Go figure. I once remember saying to my son, “That’s funny if you think about it.” To which he replied, “If you have to think about it, it isn’t funny.”
I love the humour that I share with my sons. It manifests in many forms, everything from word play to intellectual humour to fart jokes. When we are together we have fun and there’s this verbal dance we do, silently daring each other to step closer, nay, to cross the the line between acceptable and unacceptable. When one of us gets to that point we all acknowledge it, again silently and life breaks off into a new direction.
That is the benefit of familiarity, of family. There are times in my life when relationships weren’t quite as close and therefore as strong as I thought them to be. Times when dancing a verbal dance ended with me stepping on my dance partners metaphorical toes and ultimately crushing them. It’s at those times I feel like an oaf. A careless, blundering oaf that wished he had chosen not to dance at that particular time.
My dilemma is that I love to dance and will seek it out at any opportunity. Unfortunately getting swept away in a somewhat harmonious dance I will try some fancy foot work that invariably gets me into trouble. Standing, with a participle dangling, between us.
It is the nature of being me, and I have come to accept that. I am more cautious than I was when I was younger, maturity and wisdom helping me. But every once in a while something happens. Maybe I feel like a kid again. Maybe I just miss my sons. In any case, if you have ever been crushed by a dancing oaf please take this as an open letter of apology for I am sure that in all probability they were fox trotting to your merengue.
