My 10 year old son says funny things that sometimes take me a few minutes to get. Sometimes I can't stop laughing and I am somewhere where you are supposed to be quiet and he will say something like "Mom, are you okay? It really wasn't that funny." and he will look at me with a serious look on his face and tell me that it might help to bite my tongue and if that doesn't work, and then he gets an even more serious look on his face and puts his hands on my shoulders, he says very seriously "think about the stimulus package."
His humor is not limited to wordplay. He uses accents and sometimes different voices and physical humor and acts out funny improv things that he makes up and he does not break character, even though he is looking them straight in the eye and they are laughing.
He uses a lot of sarcasm in his humor, especially with his adult sister and she has the same problem that I do with some of his jokes. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to realize what he said and she'll call him back and tell him he needs to be sent to brat camp.
He uses a lot of self-deprecating humor like describing himself as a freak and a geek and a big mix of disorders and syndromes and he will make up some that he doesn't have--like alien hand syndrome which of course he acts out or Tourettes which he says he has a form of (he doesn't) that leaves him with no control over some of the funny things he says--the words just pop out of his mouth.
He uses humor to mediate fights between his sister and her boyfriend. Recently she called to complain to her brother that her boyfriend would not get her something to drink when she asked him to and she always did things for him and he just didn't get that it would be nice if he would do things for her once in a while. She was on speaker phone so her boyfriend could hear her and she told her brother that she was going to break up with her boyfriend over this because she was tired of him not doing anything for her and she thought her 10 year old brother would offer some support. He told her to calm down, and no she wasn't going to break up with him and he would try to help her if he could. Then he gave her step by step instructions on how to fix the drink and said he was reading the instructions from "How to Fix a Drink by Yourself for Dummies" and he would send her a copy of the book if she needed it. There was more to it that I can't remember but he got his sister laughing and she forgot about being mad.
And I think he looks at life like it is one big humorous soap opera. He calls it "Unhappy Days" and sometimes he makes up the script for the day's show in the backseat of the car as we are driving. When he has a choice between laughing or crying he will always choose to laugh and in doing so he makes other people laugh, taking their minds off of problems.
