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A PERSON SHOULD HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR
One day Misha and I were doing our homework. While we were copying our assignment into our notebooks I was telling Misha all about lemurs. I told him about their huge glassy eyes that were as big as saucers and also that I'd seen a picture of one holding a fountain pen. The lemur was real small and very cute.
"Did you copy it all out?" Misha asked.
"Yes."
"Now you check my notebook and I'll check yours."
We exchanged notebooks.
I started reading and began to laugh. Misha was laughing, too.
"What's so funny?" I said.
"I'm laughing at the way you wrote some of the words. Why're you laughing?"
"That's why I'm laughing, too, I mean the way you wrote this. Listen: 'The fost sat in.' What's it supposed to mean?"
Misha turned red. "I meant 'The frost set in.' But look at what you wrote! 'It was witer.' You should've written 'winter'. We'd better copy it out again. Its all the lemurs' fault."
After we'd copied the sentences out again I said, "Let's think up problems to solve."
"All right."
That's when Daddy came home. He looked in on us and said, "Hello, scholars."
"Daddy, listen to the problem I've thought up for Misha: I've two apples, but there's three of us. How can we divide them evenly?"
Daddy pulled up a chair.
Misha frowned. He was thinking hard. Daddy didn't frown, but he was thinking hard, too. They kept thinking for a long time.
"Give up, Misha?" I said.
"Yes."
"You've got to make applesauce if you want to divide them evenly." I burst out laughing. "Aunt Mila told me this one."
Misha pouted. Then Daddy squinted and said,
"If you're so smart, Dennis, I'll ask you one."
"Go ahead."
Daddy walked up and down. Then he said, "Listen carefully. There's a boy who's in 1B. His family consists of five people. His mother gets up at 7 a.m. and spends ten minutes dressing. His father takes five minutes to brush his teeth. His grandmother goes to the grocer's and is away for as long as it takes his mother to dress and his father to brush his teeth. His grandfather reads the paper for as long as his grandmother is out shopping, minus the time his mother's dressing.
"All together they try to wake the boy up in time for school every morning. This takes as long as grandfather reads the paper and grandmother goes shopping.
"When the boy in 1 Â finally wakes up he yawns and stretches for as long as it takes his mother to dress and his father to brush his teeth. It then takes him as long to wash up as it takes his grandfather to read the paper, divided by the time his grandmother goes shopping. He's as many minutes late for school as he's spent yawning and stretching, plus washing up, minus his mother's getting up, multiplied by his father's brushing his teeth.
"The question is: who is the boy in 1 Â and what's in store for him if he doesn't change his ways?"
Daddy stopped in the middle of the room and looked at me. Misha burst out laughing. Soon they were both looking at me and laughing."I can't solve it straight off 'cause we didn't study that kind of arithmetic yet." I left the room and went out into the hall. I'd guessed what the answer was: it was a lazy boy who'd soon be expelled from school. In the hall I hid behind the coats on the coat rack. I was thinking that if the problem was all about me it wasn't true, because I don't really dawdle in the mornings. And then I decided that if Daddy was going to make up stories, like that about me I wouldn't be a burden to them any longer and would leave home for good.
I could go off to some town far away. There were lots of jobs out there in the wilderness and they needed people, especially young people. I'd be conquering the wilderness, and one day Daddy would come out there with a delegation and he'd see me, and I'd stop for a minute and say, "Hello, Daddy." And then I'd go on conquering.
"Mommy sends her love," he'd say.
And I'd say, "Thanks. How is she?"
And he'd say, "All right."
And I'd say, "She's probably forgotten all about her only son."
And he'd say, "She has not! She's lost thirthy-seven kilos worrying! You can't imagine how she misses you."
I had no time to think of a good answer to that, because just then one of the coats fell on me. And then Daddy came out to the hall.
"So that's where you are! What's wrong with your eyes? Did you think I meant you?" He picked up the coat, hung it back up again and said, "I made that up. There's no such boy. Not in your class and no place else in the world."
Daddy took both my hands and pulled me out from behind the coats. He looked at me again and smiled. "A person should have
a sense of humor." His eyes were smiling, too. "It was a funny problem, wasn't it? Go on, let's see you laugh."
And I began to laugh. And he did, too. And then we went back to the living room.