Yesterday I gave up a chance to try to win ten thousand dollars:

It's raining here, it has been for days, and the front yard is a giant mud bog. It's impossible to get through it without getting mud somewhere you don't want mud. It's pretty bad. I’m talking Woodstock '94 level mud.

I'm working the graveyard shift this week, which means coming home around 7:00 AM and sleeping, if I can, until the early afternoon. Yesterday I had to make sure I was awake in time to greet the kids when they got off the school bus, since Wendy is finishing up the semester at school, and she had to be gone all day. That meant that while I was here asleep yesterday, with Wendy gone and the kids in school, Chester and Tilda had to spend the day outside. In the mud.

So the alarm goes off at 2:45, fifteen minutes before the school bus is supposed to drop off the kids at the front gate … and I stumble to the living room and look outside and see two muddy dogs, both of whom are staring intently toward the corner where they'll first glimpse the approaching school bus.

See, we have a daily tradition at our house. Every afternoon, Willow and Liam get home from school and come through the front gate … and, every day, Tilda and Chester greet them like returning war heroes. This involves a great deal of jumping up by both dogs and a great deal of yelling by both kids, neither of whom enjoy having their bookbags knocked into the dirt by the delighted pooches.

So it occurred to me yesterday that the best thing I could do would be to get the video camera and simply tape the fun as the two kids came through the gate into the mud bog and the two dogs, literally trembling with glee, knocked them into the mud. I couldn't imagine anything funnier than the sight of the four of them rolling around in the mud and the pouring rain together. I was sure that, if I videotaped that, I'd have the greatest guaranteed money-winner in the history of America's Funniest Home Videos.

But then reality set in. The thing is, the videos that make me laugh on AFV are never the ones that win. What kinds of videos make me laugh? People jumping out and scaring each other. People falling down. People falling off boats. People farting. Show me a video of someone scaring someone else so badly that he farts and falls off a boat and I'd literally laugh for days. I'm a simple man, I have simple needs.

Of course, the videos that actually win on AFV are never the ones that make me laugh. The ones that win usually involve babies laughing or babies with spaghetti in their nose or toddlers singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme or toddler's acting up. Look, I like those kinds of videos just fine … but those videos aren't funny. Those videos are cute. They're endearing. They're even valuable in terms of what makes life wonderful. They just ain't funny. You want funny? This [click here] is funny.

So I realized that my hypothetical video of the kids and dogs in the mud wouldn't win on AFV unless the kids, while rolling in the mud, were simultaneously screaming "M-I-C!! K-E-Y!! M-O-U-S-E!!" and shooting pasta out of their noses.

Crestfallen, I just did my best to de-mud the dogs and get the kids through the door without incident. I still feel, though, that I missed out on a wonderful opportunity. If nothing else, I'd have had a video clip that would have kept me in stitches for ages.

Labels: Entertainment, Personal, You Tube