7374/19894
I find it mind-blowing the way kids learn to read. When you go back to the start it’s all so ridiculous and complicated - not just learning your 26 letters and how they (usually) sound, but then how different combos of letters can make different sounds and then, just for fun, some letters are silent or change their sound for no reason (take the word “the” for example, which follows none of the conventions and yet crops up all the fucking time). Young brains may be pliable and learn fast, but even so, it’s crazy that they ever get it at all and they seem to get it very quickly.
Ernie wanted to read his book to me today and did a good job - only the word “for” tripped him up, because again it doesn’t sound like it’s written. And neither does four. What a fucking mess.
But we got to a line that said “a crab in a net” and Ernie, in mischievous mood read it as “A cuh urr ah buh CRAB i nuh IN a peanut pot” and then laughed uproariously at his own joke. “In a what?” I protested. “It doesn’t say that.”
"It does’" laughed Ernie, it says “a crab in a peanut pot!” And he laughed some more.
“What even is a peanut pot?” I asked.
But he didn’t care about that, or why he’d come up with this non-sequitir. He finds the word peanut pretty funny and I think I might know why. But still.
“It ends in t,” he insisted, “so it’s peanut pot.”
“Is peanut pot the only thing that ends in t?” I asked.
“Yes,” laughed Ernie - he was loving his brilliant joke, fronting it out, even though the other word in peanut pot also ends in t.
“Let’s try it again,” I suggested.
“A cuh urr ah buh CRAB i nuh IN…. a peanut pot,” he insisted and then rolled around laughing again.
I played along, “No, it’s not a peanut pot”. We were both enjoying the repetition of peanut pot.
We tried again, and again and again and he did it every time, laughing more each time, me getting me aggrieved and him laughing at that. It got to the point where even Stewart Lee would have said, all right, come on, that’s enough, people are paying for this, you can’t just keep saying the same thing. But Herrings are made of stronger stuff. Lee took this idea (from whom? I wonder who did it first) and came up with the mainstream commercial version that might run over 20 minutes or maybe even an hour. But Herrings are made of stronger stuff. They know this kind of joke is only funny if it runs for days, or weeks or years. Or ideally a lifetime. You have to live the joke no matter how inconvenient to your life, no matter if it means you form no meaningful relationships with anyone else. The joke is all that matters. If he has his father’s balls (oh wait) then Ernie will still be doing this joke when he’s 99. Whenever he sees the word “net” he will pause and read it as peanut pot with undampened glee and roll on the floor laughing. Even as the comic exasperation turns to genuine frustration and then anger and then the decision to leave and Ernie is alone, looking at the word net and reading it as peanut pot and laughing. Only then will he be a true comedian, unfettered by the desire for fame or money. He will not sell out.
He read it as net on about the 20th go, but I am glad I have passed the gift of this kind of joke down to him in his genes.
Meanwhile, my 8 year old daughter is now reading vociferously and happily alone. In fact tonight I realised that we might have reached the point where I never read to her again. She read her book herself tonight as she has for the last few nights. Meaning Greg Jenner’s “You Are History” might be the last book I ever read to her. Another happy milestone in her life and a sad one in mine.
