There’s a comedian in every family…I have two

I wish my kids would stop using the F-word.

But – and I’m not sure if it’s just a boy thing – they delight in announcing when they’ve done that thing that starts with an F and rhymes with cart.

It’s so unladylike I can’t even bring myself to type the word, let alone say it out loud. And I’m sure I could figure it out without them telling me it has happened.

Still I had to laugh recently. After pulling away from a gas station after a fill-up I said to my boys, “Okay, I have gas now,” to which my youngest replied, “I have gas too,” and he let ‘er rip.

Which brings me to the theme of this column – funny things our kids say.

(You didn’t really think I was going to write an entire column on the other thing did you?)

As parents know, many of the funniest conversations you’ll ever have in life are the ones you have with your kids.

Like years ago when my oldest son, who was three or four at the time, gave me this perplexed look. I was wearing a shirt with a zipper down the front, as opposed to buttons, and I could tell he was confused. He reached out for the zipper and stopping him I said, “Don’t pull mommy’s zipper, I don’t have anything on under it.”

“Aren’t you wearing that thing?” he asked.

“What thing?” I said.

“You know, that thing you wear,” he answered. “What do you call that anyway? A booby protector?”

Many of our funniest moments have been while we’re driving around in our van. Who needs talk radio when I have my kids? During one of my week’s of vacation this summer my son Justin says to me, “Mom, do you know who the sexiest girl is in Yarmouth?”

I said no, to which he said, greatly emphasizing his response, “Well I know it isn’t you.”

Maybe I should have been offended but I laughed for the next six kilometres. He later said the word sexy, to him, means girls who wear a lot of make-up, so that repaired my pride.

But tops on my list of all-time favourite funny moments has to be when my oldest son, then in Grade 3, asked me who our family doctor was.

“Why do you ask?” I said.

He said it was because they had to fill out an ‘About Me’ sheet at school.

“I had to say who our family doctor is but I didn’t know,” he said, “…so I just said it was Dr. Phil.”

After a few minutes of belly-gut laughing, where the tears are literally rolling down my cheeks, he asks me what’s so funny?

All I could think about was what his teacher must be thinking – Jacob must have one dysfunctional family.