Disclaimer

While the people who’ve read the first post of this blog have enjoyed laughing with me at Courtney, I feel the need to post an important disclaimer.

Courtney not only has given me complete and total permission to write about and publish what she does, she has requested that certain stories be told and retold in this space.  In fact, she named the blog.  At first she suggested, “Really, Courtney?”* as this is also a phrase she hears frequently, and not just from me.  My immediate concern with the title is that it would automatically limit the blog to being entirely about her.  While I imagine that 90% of my posts will feature her as a subject, I also know that our daughter, our close friends, and the dear author of the blog are not above ridiculously funny things that other people might laugh at, too.  

I also have another fear.  Courtney, by nature, is theatrical.  To be described as “theatrical” involves two pieces for me.  1.  Big motion, words, movement, etc.  2.  Using that performance to get an audience.  Courtney definitely likes an audience.  But being the performer she is, if something gets a laugh, she tends to repeat the experience to continue getting the laugh.  She and our two year old share that in common, and when our two year old is a teenager, I will be spending a lot of time in rooms where they aren’t.

The problem is, Courtney is funnier when she doesn’t mean to be.  As soon as it starts to become performance or a line, it loses the edge.  Well, not always.  Here’s a case in point.

A few years ago, our dear friend Hanna lived with us.  Hanna has an amazing stereo system, and we have a lot of music on the computer.  During cleaning days, we’d plug the computer into the stereo in her room and set the volume to “neighbors will complain.”  It made all of us happier to do chores we’d rather not.  

On one of those days, Courtney was vacuuming the living room.  The opening riff of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” blasted out of the speakers in Hanna’s room, and we all started nodding our heads as the song requires.  As the singing began, I heard from the bedroom where I was sorting laundry, “She was a sex machine!”  Hanna, who was across the hall from me in her room, and I instantly made eye contact and doubled over laughing.  We stumbled into the hallway, clutching our guts and wiping away tears, to find Courtney dancing with the vacuum cleaner like it’s a mic stand on stage.  This time the giggles took us to the floor.

Now knowing she had an audience, Courtney continued.  The dance movements became more exaggerated.  We continued to laugh.  She thought it was the dance moves, so she continued.  She was wrong.

When Courtney doesn’t know all the lyrics to a song, which is often, she will repeat the lyrics she does know to the tune.  Mostly this is just annoying.  But because the only lyrics to the song that she could actually “remember” were “sex machine,” she continued to scream it into the vacuum cleaner over and over.  Imagine it, if you will.  Get the tune in your head.  Now just scream “sex machine” to the rhythm until you burst into bladder-control-losing laughter.

After Hanna and I could stand up and breathe again without concern for peeing ourselves, Courtney turned off the vacuum cleaner.  “Why did you guys start laughing at me in the first place?”  she asked.  “I was just singing.”  

“Ummm, it’s, ‘She was a fast machine,’ C,”  I said.  I can’t speak for Hanna or Courtney on this one, but I know anytime I hear the song, I instantly crack up.

While sometimes the exaggerated performance is equally funny, the true gems are the unintentional ones.  Even in this story, what had me laughing was the accidental humor; what kept me laughing was more accidental humor.  My worry, however, is that the comments and gestures will become more intentional.  After anything I laugh at, she’s already asking, “Is that going on the blog?”  Which is why it can’t always be about her (sorry, C).  I don’t want her to lose that panache for spontaneous hilarity.

Then again, last night, in just being herself, she sat down, stretched her legs, and nearly knocked an entire bottle of wine and four glasses to the floor.  Regardless of the title, we’ll be laughing, scratching our heads, and asking, “Seriously?” as we ponder how an intelligent adult could do and say such things.

*Seriously? was Courtney’s follow up suggestion, so if you’re still concerned about her being on board, I think your fears can be assuaged.  

Why this? Why now?

For seven years, I’ve stared in wonder as I watch my partner Courtney get through the day without major injury.  She may be the only person I know who’s burned her torso taking cookies out of the oven (on the oven rack, not the baking pan).  I swear she’s the poster child of functional adult ADHD.  She jumps from thought to thought, activity to activity, and most of the time I can follow her, something I can only credit to spending a lot of time together.  We laugh often and hard in all that time, usually at Courtney’s expense.  I wish I could say that I’m above the easy joke, but I’m not.  Courtney opens a lot of doors; all I have to do is walk in.

The best part of the things she says and does is how unintentional they are.  Many will make the comments she makes to get the laugh or commentary.  Courtney, however, only realizes what she’s said in the seconds after the words are out of her mouth.  Likewise, her actions spring from instant impulse.  She’s a teacher, so she does have a filter, but even then the filter leaks.

Earlier this month on a family road trip to nearby Kansas City, MO, Courtney sparked the idea for this blog.  I’d already been thinking a lot about blogging--perhaps about our new adventures in parenting, perhaps about the ups and downs of being a part of the foster care system, maybe about teaching, maybe about writing.  The problem was I didn’t know what the focus of my blog should be. 

Both being teachers, we talk frequently of classes, lessons, approaches we take with the subjects we teach--Spanish and Math (Courtney) and Writing (me).  Courtney tends to talk a lot more.  I mostly listen.  As she recounted the successes of teaching the subtraction of negative integers with something she called “The Fart Principle,” I commented that we should create DVD mini lessons of her teaching and sell them online, as entertaining little clips for teachers to use in introducing or reviewing concepts.  She was very excited about the idea.  “Ohhh,” she said, “like that science one.  What’s his name?”  Before I could reply with Bill Nye the Science Guy’s name, she continued, “Weird Al the Science Gal?”  There was a half second of silence before Carrie, her sister who was traveling with us, and I exploded in laughter.  Instantly I pictured a man with dark, thick curly hair and a bushy mustache, wearing a red sequined gown and tiara.  “What?  That’s not his name?”  she asked.  She was laughing with us, but the question was completely serious.

A few minutes later, as we continued talking and cruising steadily down I-35, the car suddenly lurched out of cruise began to slow down.  I’m used to this, actually.  Often times Courtney, who has little control of her gangly arms, knocks the car into neutral or second gear.  But this felt different.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Courtney flail towards the gear shifter between us.  Instinctively I asked, “What did you do now?” as I glanced at the panel in front of me.  I noticed the overdrive light glowed neon orange at me.

“I didn’t think it would do anything,” Courtney responded sheepishly.  “I just wanted to push the button,” she said.  

“Seriously?  You nearly killed us because you wanted to push a button?”  I laughed, bringing the car back into cruise and glancing in the mirrors to make sure we weren’t in danger of being pulled over.  I’m already working on explaining that one to the officer who pulls us over one of these days.  “I’m sorry, sir.  She had an ‘oohhh, shiny’ moment.”  Or, “It wasn’t me, officer.  She has no control over her limbs.”

Within minutes of the car settling back down, Courtney began her car yoga.  On longer car trips, she will do a series of bends and twists in the passenger seat (and occasionally when’s she driving, too) to release the tension of not being able to move as much as she needs to.  Not-so-secretly, I’m completely jealous of her flexibility; I can’t touch my toes with my knees bent.  But what I don’t understand is how someone who can contort her body in all the ways she can, sometimes literally folding herself in half, can also manage to be so completely without grace.  Which brings me back to the car.  She leaned forward in the car rendition of a seated forward bend and sat in the pose for a number of minutes to stretch her lower back.  She glided gracefully down into the pose, her head tucked close to her ankles, seat belt still firmly attached.  Then in a sudden spasm, she jerked her head up and straight into the underside of the glove compartment.  She hit her head so hard, it popped the bendy clip holding her bangs in her ponytail open.  The car erupted into laughter again.  

Just as the car settled down, I noticed the radio station turning to static.  I had announced earlier that I had a surprise CD, an accidental find from the library, to listen to when we were done with the radio.  I pushed the button on the console to switch from radio to disc, and one of our favorite Jack Johnson songs from a Pandora station blasted from the speakers.  I expected an excited grin, a question like, “Hey, how did you get this song?”  Instead, Courtney picked up the CD holder, opened it up, and upon finding the CD missing, asked, “Where’s the CD?”

“Seriously?”  

Carrie and I laughed again.  About ten seconds later, Courtney caught on and laughed, too.  I’ll give her that.  One of her best personality traits is the ability to laugh at herself.

How our daughter managed to sleep through this stretch of the car ride can only be attributed to the fact that these antics happen daily.  And that’s when it hit me; I have the perfect subject for my blog.