A silly Frenchman
Lewis Carroll knew it and so did Spike Milligan. And a proportion of stand-up comedians know it too. Silliness is a good thing - especially in these beleaguered times when old certainties are being washed away. It's tempting to go around with a furrowed brow, speaking seriously and fretting about current affairs and wailing, "Oh woe is me!"
But a dose of silliness is good for you, like a healing balm. Letting yourself go and being daft like a kitten chasing its tail or a puppy cavorting on a beach. We need to nurture the silly genes inside us and give them airtime.
Jack Haggerty
When I walk Phoebe back to our house after school, we always pass a gateway where we share a daft idea. I once told her that a big, bad dog lives there so we tiptoe past keeping as quiet as mice. She knows it's just a silly game but she will still ask questions about that dog.
"What's its name?"
"Satan!"
"Do they keep it on a lead?"
"No. On a very thick chain!"
I think that children are much better about being silly than most adults are. In a sense, child rearing and formal education seem to be partly about squeezing out the silliness - as if being silly was some kind of undesirable condition requiring suppression.
Silliness is connected with light-heartedness, mischief, laughter and loosening up and I'm all for it. It's a vital release valve.
This post was inspired by Debra at "She Who Seeks" (pictured above)
Silliness needs intelligence! I still have my copy of Spike Milligan's Silly Verse (?) For Kids.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely in the pro-silliness camp. The world needs more silly.
ReplyDeleteI remember being silly and cavorting around and I do that sometimes with the twins when I visit there, but too often there is not enough silliness, especially around here where I live with people taking everything seriously and if you tell a joke they don't get it at all and ask for explanations.
ReplyDeleteChildren seem to get silliness and have a good time with it. I'm sure your grandchildren enjoy your antics.
ReplyDeleteHahahahahaha, that is DEFINITELY a very silly picture of me, thanks!
ReplyDeleteI can be he silliest person for miles around, especially with my sister. We soon make everybody roll their eyes and wish we‘d stop.
ReplyDeletePoor kid will have nightmares and be ever fearful of large dogs. That one's extra silly.
ReplyDeleteI find being serious very difficult. The lense I use on the world just sees it's daftness. Hereby take notice!! you are not allowed to make an AI photo of me by the way. In fact I think you should be restrained from AI.
ReplyDeleteGentle silliness is good for you.
ReplyDeleteI like the caricatures too.
I live for silly.
ReplyDeleteDebra is looking good after her summer travels.
ReplyDeleteMy brain woke me up and made me write this down in the wee, small hours of the morning:
ReplyDelete“There’s an animal called a kerfuffle.
It’s really incredibly small
And, but for a sort of a scuffle,
You’d not know it was there at all.
Its visits are legion and sundry
For it tends to go round in bulk,
But it prefers to be in a quandary
Where it likes to sit quietly and sulk.”
Anyone else got a brain like this?
Don Marquis (1878-1937) had a brain like yours.
DeleteHis verse like that of e.e. cummings is written in lower case.
And he liked to leave out the apostrophe.
His archy is a cockroach and his mehitabel is an alley cat.
the octopus s secret wish
is not to be a formal fish
he dreams that some time he may grow
another set of legs or so
and be a broadway music show.
archy at the zoo (excerpt)
Silliness comes in many varieties, even if the illustrations in this post somehow seem disturbingly uniform in facial shape and expression... ;)
ReplyDeleteIs Haggerty Lear's Fool or Mr Pudding's ?
ReplyDeleteG.K. Chesterton sat in a London park on a sweltering day.
A small boy looked at this perspiring, very overweight man and asked :
* Mummy, what is that man for ? *
Chesterton laughed about it for years.
The boy had raised a metaphysical question in Chesterton's mind.
What was he for ? Whom did he serve ? And to what purpose ?