The joke's on you

On the way to school this morning, Caroline says, "Daddy, let's do riddles!"

Daddy says, "Ok."

-- pause --

"Go ahead Daddy, ask me a riddle."

Ummmmmmmm.....

Daddy: "What's black and white and read all over?" (Joke works much better said out loud...)

Caroline: "A penguin who ate all the pink cupcakes!"

Not bad, huh? Turns out, though, it came from a book called Pinkalicious Tickled Pink. So while it's clever, it wasn't original.

After a few other tries that didn't make any sense, Caroline hit gold - "An embarrassed zebra!"

Love it. That's Kenny Bania worthy.

Daddy explains the joke (you know, a newspaper), and how the linguistic device of a homophone delivers the classic punch line. At which point, Caroline disputes the hilarity of the joke by explaining in a deadpan that it doesn't make any sense. She fully understands the concept of homophones - can name many of them on her own - but apparently doesn't like being duped. So, of course, the joke didn't make any sense.

Tough crowd around here.