Lessons in Morality 2

Hello Possums. It is a joyful experience to watch children forming their own moral understandings. I was privileged in such a way on an occasion that would never have happened if I was parenting by the book. If I had been a vigilant parent, Sally would never have been exposed to Raw Comedy. As it was, she was accidentally placed in a situation that called for moral judgment.

Raw Comedy.

I recently got an ipod and worked out how to download podcasts the other day. I was so excited that I downloaded over 100 free programs including how to meditate in 14 lessons, how to speak Italian in 18 lessons and the Tripple J Raw Comedy Finals, among others.

My dad also gave me a gift voucher for my birthday in February (the 26th, although this is irrelevant to the story), and I spent it on some cute little portable speakers to pop the ipod into. I was playing with these new ‘toys’ in between getting dinner ready last night and decided to play the comedy show while I was cooking.

Sally, my youngest child, is still at the age where she enjoys playing where she can also see and talk to me. She is seven. While I was cooking and listening to my podcast, Sally set up her toys on the rug in the dining area, which is really in the same big room as the kitchen. She was involved in imaginative play and I couldn’t really tell whether she was listening to the podcast or not at first.

This particular podcast was of the South Australian finalist of the Raw Comedy competition on 28th March 2006, Beck Hill, doing her winning stand-up routine. Her last joke involved the image of a dwarf who’s scarf was dragging on the ground because it was a scarf made for a “normal-sized” person. A friend of the dwarf noticed the scarf, picked it up and held it off the ground as they walked through a muddy section of the park. The punch line was, and I couldn’t help thinking that it looked like a girl taking her pet midget for a walk. Ha ha ha.

By this stage, Sally had stopped what she was doing on the mat and was listening to the podcast. She had a serious look on her face. Neither of us laughed at the punch line. She came over to the bench and watched me cooking for awhile. I was half thinking about the politically incorrect nature of the joke, surprised that a young comedian would resort to this style of joke and that it was endorsed by her audiences as well as the Raw Comedy competition, and half filled with regret that Sally had been exposed to it.

Had she understood the put-down?

Would she think it was funny or even OK?

I watched Sally leaning on the bench, her little brow furrowed with the effort of contemplation, and wondered what sense she would make of it all. I was almost expecting her to ask for an explanation of the “joke”.

Finally she looked up to me with an expression of concern in her deep brown eyes and said in a serious tone of voice,

Mum, what if you were a midget and you were listening to that?