The Dead Chipmunk

I. Anecdote

One day in August I went to campus to make some copies and retrieve a book from my office. My three-year-old daughter came with me as my “helper.” I had packed her a muffin and some milk, and I had promised her we would have a picnic when I finished what I had to do. After she helped me by pushing all the buttons in the elevator and spinning around fast in my swivel chair, we left the building, and I began to look for a good place for our picnic. I spotted a shady bench in a small courtyard, and I pointed the way. As we approached, however, I noticed, directly in front of the bench, a dead chipmunk splayed beneath a cloud of flies.

“Honey,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, “let’s look for another place.” I know by now I can’t shield or distract my children from all unpleasant things, but if I had the choice, I would rather not picnic by a dead animal and answer the inevitable barrage of questions about the chipmunk’s condition.

“Why?” she asked.

“Let’s just keep looking,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

With my hand on her shoulder I managed to turn her away from the bench. “This is just not a very good spot,” I said. “How about over there?”

“Why, Dad?” she asked, trying to turn back around.

“There’s something over there,” I said, in effect rendering the bench irresistible.

“What is it?”

“It’s a chipmunk,” I said.

“Chipmunk?” She shook free from my hand and looked back toward the bench.

“Let’s go, honey,” I said. “That chipmunk is not alive.”

My daughter took a couple of steps toward the bench and stopped. Evidently she spotted the chipmunk. “Why?” she asked.

“It’s dead,” I said.

She turned back to me, her face clouded with worry. I knelt down beside her, put my hand on her head. “Let’s just go somewhere else,” I said.

“Yeah, Dad,” she said quietly. “We don’t want the dead chipmunk to eat our food.”

II. Notes

(1) I see now what happened. My daughter and I went to campus, and we became unwitting elements in the spontaneous generation of a joke. All of the requisite materials—protective father, inquisitive child, snacks, dead animal—were combined on a pleasant morning, and a joke was created. When joke genesis occurs in the real world (or even on a university campus), we have the opportunity to learn a great deal about jokes. How are they formed? What are their conditions and variables? Why—or how—are they funny? And what exactly is to be gotten when we get it?

(2) A character...