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.