For the memory banks

Since he started at Prep, The Climber has been introduced to jokes. I think he is not sophisticated enough to get jokes yet, but he always laughs at them. Just sometimes not for the right reasons, I suspect. Anyway, his latest thing is to make up his own jokes. Absurdist jokes is probably the best way to describe them. Here's one I'm saving, just in case he decides to be a stand-up comedian when he grows up:

Climber: Why does the car drive underwater with the octopus?
Stomper Girl: Why?
Climber: Because ... it wanted to eat seaweed!!!!

(SG : hahahahahahaha...)

SG: Why did it want to eat seaweed?
Climber: Because it doesn't like grass.

Also for posterity, a couple of unexpected things that became emotional triggers for the Climber. He's not actually a sooky kid at all, hardly ever cries so stuff like this sticks in my head quite vividly.

1. He has started biting his nails and I am mildly paranoid about this developing into a lifelong habit. Mostly because Fixit bites his down to and past the quick, which I find revolting. So Climber & I had a chat about it, and I said we might try painting his nails with Stop 'n Grow if he keeps biting, just to help him get out of the habit before it gets too ingrained. But the thought of evil-tasting fingernails makes him burst into noisy tears, even when he thinks of it out of the blue, so now obviously I'm buggered and can't use that approach. Back to the drawing board with that one.
2. Last term his class had a student teacher called Sarah and when she left we were all asked to contribute small items for a new teacher's stationery pack, like cute erasers and novelty pencil-sharpeners. So I decided to give her a pack of coloured chalk and some stickers. Then I wrapped them up separately and on the stickers I wrote "for putting on your GOOD students" and on the chalk I wrote "for throwing at your BAD students" and added that we hoped she'd have more good students than bad. Harmless enough, I thought. But the concept of Sarah piffing the lovely coloured chalk that he'd given her as a present at naughty kids (which could conceivably be him) caused hysterics, and took us 30 minutes of fast talking about how teachers never did mean things like that anymore but in the olden days when we were at school.. I could only come up with one instance of mean teacher behaviour (Miss Gorton in Grade 4 who kicked me) because I was a girly swot but Fixit had quite a long list, ranging from ear-pulling, caning and being locked in a cupboard... as I said to Climber, I don't think Fixit was a model student somehow.