To laugh: the American Dream (All titles are better with colons. Ask all the smartypants academics.)

I think that life is easier for funny people. People like you when you're funny. Funny people take the edge off -- they release the endorphins for you. I am happy for my daughter that she seems to have a sense of humor. I'm not sure where she got it -- not from me. Oh sure, I appreciate humor, and I work at it -- often too hard. I have been known, by some, to kill a good joke with my enthusiasm. My wit never really seems to elicit more than the chuckle. Don't get me wrong; I can get people to laugh, just not with a joke. Retelling embarassing and/or ridiculous events of my life tend to be the way to go for me. I think this really does comment on my ability to find and deliver a joke.

Granted, like the successful American dream, I have more comedic success than my mother, Momologue Sr. Case in point: I recently found out that when she was in college she thought that it was a hoot to scream out her dorm window into the quad below. What, you might ask, would be funny to scream out a dorm window? CROTCH. She reports that it was an "edgy" term in the late sixties. And, apparently, screaming it out of her dorm window was blissfully hysterical. Thankfully, I can report that she was not alone; she had a pack of likeminded young women who delighted in this bizarre behavior.

O.K. Now here is where I must drop the flabergasted act and confess that my college friends and I are guilty of screaming, "Sucks to be you. We're in a car," out a car window at the walkers trudging up Bascom Hill. We were giddy to be riding and not walking through the Wisconsin winter. We did not, however, yell CROTCH or any other "edgy" term. I mean, come on. We knew that our behavior was juvenile, but we were in a moving target. No one knew who we were. Momologue Sr. yelled it out of her dorm window. And, to boot, more than one time. I can just imagine the passersby strolling through the quad only to be assaulted with, "CROTCH." They stop, look up at the window, and say, "Oh I guess that Peg is in an edgy mood again. She'll probably be wearing black in the dining hall today."

So, on the sliding scale of humor, I'm probably a step above my mom. Greta, at the ripe age of three and a half, seems likely to score even higher. As a game on a recent car ride, I asked her to think of funny names for a town. Without missing a beat she said, "Nougat. Nougat would be a funny name for a town. Hi, I'm from Nougat." Her next town was, "Barnesandnoble." Not so funny? Perhaps it was the delivery for that one that made me laugh. I'm not sure. But, she didn't scream it out the window.

CROTCH.