Funny Girl

We had a church Christmas Party on Friday. It was a dinner/talent(?) show type thing, and when you do that sort of thing with Mormons, you're fairly likely to get one Evolution of Dance, one to three whipped cream pies to the face, a reference to a PG Will Ferrell moment, and at least twenty unnecessary wigs.

During the skit changes (aka waiting for someone to tie shoes to their hands) we had an emcee who told bad holiday-themed jokes. "What falls in the North Pole but doesn't get hurt?" "What do monkeys sing at Christmastime?" "What did Adam say on December 24th?" Yeah, those exact jokes.

So, Lennon is sitting there with us, listening to these terrible jokes fall flat (as they should, even among Mormons), and she is looking clearly frustrated. So, I ask her what's wrong and she says, in her most serious Lennon tone, "These jokes are the worst. I have funnier jokes than that."

I ask her, "Like what?" And she tells me, "Better than that guy's."

Which makes me laugh. And I tell her that I bet she does, and that she should go tell him one during the skit, so he can say it on the next break.

But Lennon is a shy type. Doesn't talk to people she doesn't know. Never in a million years would she actually go up there and tell this guy she could one up him.

Except that, as soon as the curtain opens up, and the boy scouts start singing about tying kids to trees and their cross-dressing leaders (Mormons are weird), Lennon gets up off her chair and heads straight for the stage. I watch her whisper something to the emcee, and he shakes his head no, and she says something else, and he points her back to her seat, and I think to myself, "I shouldn't have said anything. Poor kid."

She comes walking back to her seat, and I just pat her on the head and she looks up at me and shrugs her shoulders. And then I comfort Harrison who is crying because someone is throwing candy at the crowd, and he's nowhere near it.

As the curtain closes, Lennon gets up from her seat and goes straight for the stage again, and I think, "Oh no." But she's looking determined and I figure I should stay out of the affair, because the last thing I want to discourage is perseverance.

But there's no issue. The emcee tells a bad joke, sees Lennon standing there, and he just picks her up so she can reach the mic, announcing that his assistant has a joke too.

"Where do you find a turkey?"

Pause for beat.

"In Turkey."

She is let down off the podium, and as she readjusts her sweater, she walks back to our table, like You're Welcome.