(You can find Lessons #1 through 7 in the 10 QUICK RULES FOR RAISING DAUGHTERS WHO WANT YOU IN THEIR LIVES AS KIDS, TEENAGERS and ADULTS series here.)
LESSON #8: HUMOR IS EVERYTHING
“Jane, you ignorant slut.”
Something I say often and emphatically to my daughter, Jane. And I’ve been saying it for years.
Why?
Because it’s funny.
It’s funny because it’s a famously recognized line delivered by Dan Aykroyd to Jane Curtain in a Saturday Night Live skit.
And it’s funny because my daughter’s name is Jane, and we’ve used it in my family (for years) when Jane has done something “goofy,” or she has misplaced something… or she has procrastinated into overdrive (not uncommon!).
Yes, we are a sick and demented family. Especially me.
And sick and demented will keep your daughters laughing at home, where sick and demented belongs.
Now, I don’t appear sick and demented, or raunchy and foul. But I am. My daughters are. And this is what makes it even more fun.
In fact, all three of us are often described as “so nice” (we’d like to think we are), “composed” (again, we are), “agreeable” (yes, that too), and “traditional” (I guess).
I am proud to have developed these attributes in my daughters.
But I am even more proud that they inherited my mutinous, rebellious and disobedient disorder of the mouth.
Yes, it took time and patience and perseverance and cautious moderation to develop sick and demented daughters. This cannot be accomplished overnight.
It requires constant judiciousness. Precise rules (“No, you may not say that at school, in church, while at dinner with your friend’s parents. And never in front of Nana and Grandma. They already think I’m sick”… ).
Exercise of caution. Prudent discretion. And the standard “funny” vs. “offensive” discussion… often.
I mean, who says a girl can’t be both dainty and dirty?
And OK, there have been occasional drawbacks. Like when one of Jane’s high school boyfriends (an only child from a very conservative home) didn’t like it when she “swore.”
Oh well… F-you. We don’t like you either. 😉
Or the time Jane (at 6 years old) was visiting a friend and the Mom didn’t know their whereabouts when Audrey and I went to pick Jane up. Audrey, always the “second-Mom” to Jane, screamed in the Mom’s face, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Audrey was 8 at the time. I all-at-once wanted to both die and slap her high-five. I mean, really… the Mom didn’t know where Jane, or her own daughter, was.
Humor is the most crucial element in my family, and I am delighted (I worked damn hard at it) that my daughters are funny, fun, witty, and wise… and can remember a humorous line from any book, film or television show and deliver it at the perfect moment.
People who know them, love this about them. They make people laugh. They make people happy. They make people comfortable.
And their humor is always appropriate to appropriate audiences (I worked my ass off to accomplish this).
I must say that I have always felt badly for girls and women who are humorless. Or who find offense in almost anything. They are sheltered. They are stifled. They are guarded. They are taciturn and yes, even morose. And they seem to need constant protection.
Give me irreverent. Indulge me with a joke. Toss in baudy, base and uncouth.
Call me sick and demented after reading my Rule #8.
I thank you for the compliment!
(And I guess I should add here that it was my sense of nonsense that attracted my husband to me in the first place… ah, to be loved for my most robust organ – my brain!)
One of my fathers pet names for me was jackass. Sometimes he would call me a little jerk….as in: “come here you little jerk, I need help with something”.
I suppose that some people would think that was weird but it truly warmed my heart. It still warms my heart when my son comes into the room and I say “well here is the little jackass now.” and he gets the biggest smile on his face. I have been berated for this but I am proud that I have passed on a very quirky (quirky was the most polite word I could think of) sense of humor to our children. They will have more fun than the average stick in the mud…but that is just my humble opinion.
My husband would occasionally have to pack lunch for the kids (I have only one daughter and two sons) when I was away. He’d write my daughter notes such as “have a good day shithead” and he would put items like soda, money and things I wouldn’t normally include – they were in grade school/middle school. I had never read/heard anyone describe what has been our philosophy for raising our children and thought we were the only “crazy” people. I stumbled on your blog as I was looking for help in getting my daughter, and me through a broken heart. I am bookmarking your blog and will refer back to it often. Thank you! It was just what I needed!
Beautifully said. Amen!
I’m totally with you! I don’t get people who don’t have a sense of humor. And they defenately don’t get me.
I once got some strong prescription pain killers and the pharmasist told me that I could just purchase half of them and then get more if needed. I just said with a straight face that “it’s ok, if I don’t use them all, I’ll just sell them, do you think I’ll get well from them?” First she thought I was serious. I guess a second look to my designer bag, three kids and the overall apprearance of all of us made her to decide I was joking.
I think people who take life too seriously loose an important part of life. Even difficult things become more tolerable when you have a sense a humor.
HA! Get ’em, Sharon! I love it. A post that is much needed to be said and amen’d!
Great stuff as usual. I recognized the line from Saturday Night.
Your family sounds just like mine. We were teased growing up—mostly by my dad. But I knew that was my dad’s only real way to show love. So we loved it! Still, to this day, we all tease one another and yet, afterwards, we all know we are deeply loved by one another.
And, I must add, as soon as I saw “Jane, you ignorant slut” I thought SNL!!!! Man, am I old? tee-hee! (that’s back when SNL was good!)
One of the first blog entries I ever read (don’t even remember who wrote it) was talking on and on about how you should never tease kids and how it negatively affects them for life. And commenter and commenter was agreeing with her. I remember thinking I have no place in this blogosphere if that’s common thought here.
And thank goodness it isn’t! Amen, sister! I’ll love your blog even more from now on (and I already loved it before)!
Ok, I think I want to make out with you after this post. 🙂 You just officially won me over (although, let’s be honest, you gals did that a while ago!).
But seriously, I was raised in a very “uncouth” family, we jokingly call ourselves “carni’s”, as in, those freaks at the carnivals. Not because we are smelly or missing teeth, but because we often don’t fit in to anyone else’s mold. A sense of humor is absolutely essential, and I think a woman who is smart with a biting wit is unlike any other.
Btw, I say “Jane, you ignorant slut” all the time to my mom and sister, and neither one of them is named Jane. Is that bad? 😉
`Arianne
My mom’s name is Jane. I wonder if she’d remember the SNL skit . . . it is worth a try!
Love this post!! Humor is a very important quaility to have and to teach!! If you can’t laugh at yourself, you won’t get far.
While I was growing up, my mom was the type who didn’t swear or talked dirty so I learned to pretty much be the same…now she’s 76 and lo and behold she’s suddenly learned to say the word F*ck…the first time I heard her say it I couldn’t stop laughing, it just wasn’t her! lol As for me, through the years I’ve learned to hold my own where swearing and dirty talk is concerned! hehe xox
Good reading…..I am happy to say that my daughter is also my best friend. Now that she is a mother, we relate better with one another. I love having a daughter.
ROFL
that’s awesome that you all have such a great sense of humor. 🙂
What a great post, Sharon – and what a great relationship you have with your daughters! I am off to read the other posts in this series 🙂
Awesome post Sharon!! I also read the other posts in this series and I loved them all. You have such an awesome relationship with your daughters! I am very close with my mom as well and I hope that if I ever have a daughter, that we will be really close as well.
Can I just say how much better reading this post made me feel about myself? This was the kind of relationship I had with my father and one that my mom never accepted. She and I have never had the best of relationships simply because we just can’t relate.
My husband and I are so similiar in our personalities and I had the exact conversation with my daughters the other day in the car “Some things that we say at home STAY AT HOME”. It totally sounded like a Vegas commercial!
Thank you so much for writing this!
This post was wonderful! I remember getting teased in Kindergarten and thinking that the kids who were teasing didn’t like me. I came from a very polite family with very little teasing. We had fun, don’t get me wrong, but we were very careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings. My husband is a joker! He will say outrageous things just to see the reaction. I have learned a lot from him! I just finished reading your other entries on this subject. I am going to mark it and refer to it often as I raise my daughter (and sons!)!
[…] not to say I’m adverse to swearing… in fact, my husband and I always encouraged in our children the art of seeing humor in colorful language – in the appropriate context, of […]
Humor is essential…glad you added it. BUT, (This one’ll get some people up in a flurry) I agree with an English teacher who once said that swearing was for the bereft of brain…you just couldn’t find a more in all the English language, eh? And when it comes to being dirty…I’d rather it be the earthy kind…from mud football of course, or making mud pies for afternoon snack.
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
– Bob Wells
The world is full of lower tactics at humor: dirty, snide, even gross. World, find me funny and…if I am compared to those of you who take pride in being found uncouth…uncommonly ladylike!
You know, it’s funny; I have worked in a male-dominated field (engineering), hence, I swear like a sailor.
I’ve yet to EVER hear my 18-year-old swear around me (although I’ve read her swear online) – don’t know quite why – I would not find it particularly offensive, but it seems to cross a boundary of what’s mother-daughter appropriate with her & so be it…it is damn interesting, ‘tho 😉