His Wit is So Dry, It’s Like Sandpaper.
With Dylan in camp for a week, I’ve had lots of time to spend with Shane.
We’ve gone out to lunch, to the zoo, and to a museum. We’ve played board games and card games, built with Legos and Contraptions. Shane’s been learning magic tricks – again, since he was a serious magician for three years in elementary school. So I’ve watched lots of card tricks, which are pretty amazing actually.
Shane and I have spent lots of time talking, sometimes philosophically. We’ve had some serious conversations and some silly ones. For the most part, we just chat about whatever comes into our minds. Getting to know him, one-on-one, is a pleasure.
Like his brother, the older he gets, the more there is to like.
And Shane is very, very funny. His wit is so dry, it’s like sandpaper.
“Most people don’t get my jokes,” he said to me as I nearly buckled over with laughter one day. “I don’t know why.”
“They have to be smart,” I told him. “You have a very intelligent sense of humor.”
“But sometimes people laugh at me when I don’t even mean to be funny.”
I laughed again. “Sometimes you are funniest when you don’t mean to be,” I said.
“See?” he said. “I don’t really get how that happens.”
“Sometimes you point out something so obvious, it’s funny,” I told him. “Not everyone thinks like you do, so they don’t think about things the way you do.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s funny.”
“Well, when you tell someone about the way you see it, it can be wildly entertaining.”
“But when I say it, I don’t think it’s funny,” he said.
“For those of us who like seeing things in new ways, though, it can be extremely funny,” I said. “It’s a good thing to be funny without trying. People aren’t laughing at you; they’re laughing at the way you describe things, because the way you describe things can be very interesting.”
“I guess,” Shane said. “But I’m not sure why sometimes I’m funny and sometimes I’m not.”
“I think we all feel that way.”
I don’t know if he understood what I was saying, or even if he’ll remember talking about it.
But I sure have loved spending time with him, laughing when he’s trying to be funny, and when he’s not.
Shane helps me see the world in a whole new way.