Somehow, Isabella has got a natural vacuum in her head. No, not literally – them’s fighting words! Rather, somebody, somewhere, discussed “natural vacuums,” and now it’s stuck.

“Natural means nobody made it,” she told me the other day. “Except for God.”

“Right,” I said, that being the correct reply to the majority of her questions.

“A natural vacuum is a vacuum that no one made.”

“Right.” I imagined that in her head she was envisioning a rock formation at the edge of a mountain that was shaped suspiciously like a Hoover vacuum. I failed miserably trying to explain what a natural vacuum was. There’s nothing to describe!

“A natural vacuum is like when there’s no air and everything gets sucked in,” I tried, realizing that this was woefully inadequate. However, she just nodded, perhaps in understanding but more likely in complete and utter disinterest in what I was babbling on about.

“Tell me a story,” she started, “about a boy who was sucked into a natural vacuum.”

Carrie and I burst out laughing. I still giggle about it a bit now.

Isabella, like many kids, has the ability to be unintentionally funny. Sometimes the humor comes from phonetic mistakes (like how she always says, “Puckett’s” with an ‘F’ instead of ‘P’). Madeline was the same way (she said, “truck” and “walk” the same way, like “truck” with an “f” instead of “tr”).

Other times, Isabella recognizes strange patterns (e.g. faces in toilet seats, alphabet letters in ceiling duct work, …) in a way that is both hilarious and immensely interesting to me. I remember long ago wondering if she’d ever talk, and now she cracks me up all the time. She might grow out of some of this, though there’s a possibility that she’s inherited it from one of her parents, that one being me.

I never realized that I was unintentionally funny (having tried so hard to be intentionally funny) until dinner the other night with Carrie’s and my friend DeAnn from high school and her husband Karey. The friend relayed how she and Karey had thoroughly enjoyed our final conversation before they moved off to NY several years back (they’ve recently moved back here). She said that they laugh almost daily about something I had said back then. I was of course flattered until I realized that I hadn’t apparently been shooting for humor at the time. Apparently, I had said something like, “I guess that means something, but I don’t know what.” And that had been funny to them -- hysterically, memorably funny. In fact, in the years since then, “That must mean something,” was a funny little catchphrase between the two of them. So my pride was deflated a bit when I found out the whole story…

But I don’t dwell on that (at least outside of the blogosphere and the psychiatrist’s office). I don’t look at it like they were laughing at me; I prefer to focus on the fact that I brought them joy over the years, albeit unintentionally. There’s a really good chance that my subconscious did it entirely on purpose and just never told my conscious mind about it. My subconscious is a bit cheeky at times.

Apparently, these two friends were finely attuned to my subconscious, because I did it to them again over dinner that night. All I said was, “The Mexican fires?” and I saw something I think I’ve never actually witnessed firsthand in such close proximity. As I looked directly into DeAnn’s face and said that, her face cracked and deformed, shifting into a look of agony. It was like some pain and sadness had just slammed into her. Her amusement was so extreme and unexpected that she skipped straight into tears, leaping over the laughter part entirely. When the laughter finally caught up, she couldn’t even talk for a full minute. She just gagged and snorted. I didn’t know whether to console her, laugh with her, or perform the Heimlich. I was left looking around the table for someone to fill me in on what I’d said that was so funny. I’m still not really sure; I didn’t really understand the explanation, and my subconscious and conscious haven’t been on speaking terms for years.

Returning to Isabella, she may have inherited that trait. If she can bring joy to people through her interesting personality and observations, I think that’s a beautiful thing. Whether accidental or intentional makes no difference to me (as long as people aren’t trying to be hurtful), and it will be up to Carrie and me to make sure that it doesn’t matter to her either.