How important is "funny?"

Tonight, I had the distinct privilege of hearing Myah (she's 3) first funny joke. She was sitting at the dinner table eating the Mac-n-cheese that I made (Sheila was at MOPS) when she said "Daddy, why did the cow cross the road? He wanted to go to the mooooovie theater."

Now, I know it doesn't have you rolling on the ground... and she certainly won't make the next blue collar tour with that material (although cow jokes might fit in... who knows), but for a dad that values funny... this was a big moment!

I don't know about anyone else, but I guess I think most anything should have some kind of funny moment... or at least an attempt.

I have said this to as many people as will listen to me for more years than I can remember... if there is not a comedian at my funeral someone is not listening to me! (btw - not a Christian comedian - I mean a funny comedian... he can be a christian and he can be clean... just no churchy jokes - theologial humor is neither theological, nor humorous)

Anyway... I often wonder how important is "funny" in the big picture. If I am honest, I came by my desire to make jokes and be an idiot out of necessity to survive Junior high... if they were laughing at me... they weren't laughing AT me.

5 reasons I think humor has a big place in our lives because...

1. it makes us realize that we aren't as big a deal as we think.
2. it takes like a million more muscles to frown than it does to smile (I will leave the exact number of muscles to the geeks... you guys probably don't even understand what I am talking about anyway... too busy flexing those frowning muscles and freaking out over my bad spelling, punctuation and capitalization)
3. it relieves stress
4. it reminds us that things will get better... and then get worse again... and so on
5. I am still happy that people sometimes laugh at me rather than AT me.

Jeremy