The Joke Book Protocol

Today, in a moment brought to you by IKEA (you know the one - three people, too many screws, and no shared definition of “assembly”), the air in our house got heavy.

I sat down next to a joke book - the kind full of 80s and 90s “jokes” that sometimes barely make sense, but my 8-year-old thinks they’re brilliant.

Instead of picking up The New Yorker or a Dan Siegal read (my usual reflex), I read a few aloud.

“Why did the belt get arrested? Because it held up a pair of pants.”
(My husband laughed. My son didn’t get it.)

“What do ghosts eat for dinner? Spook-getti.”
(This time my son laughed. Hard.)

And just like that, the temperature in the room shifted.

It reminded me: sometimes the reset isn’t in clever analysis or the big insight. It’s in the shared laugh. Maybe especially when the joke is bad. The 80s gave us Oregon Trail and neon windbreakers. The 90s gave us dial-up and bad pun joke books. My son reminds me that even the worst joke can be the right intervention.

Sustaining isn’t always solemn. Sometimes it looks like depth. Sometimes it looks like laughter. Both are lifeblood.

cc: Thinking Machines Lab :)

Sincerely standing corrected,

Amber Eltaieb