Life is too serious to take seriously. That's what I'll teach my granddaughter

Most high school students aspire to graduate with some distinction – say, as valedictorian. Me, I was different. I wanted mostly to make people laugh. And thanks to my shenanigans in and out of the classroom, I was voted Class Clown (male division). My high school yearbook boasts a photo of me holding a bottle of booze and slumping drunkenly — back in 1970 getting plastered was still considered pretty hilarious.

I went on to fulfill my destiny as a goofball, more or less. I courted my wife with wisecracks and we’ve kept kidding each other through a marriage of 46 years. I occasionally brought my joking sensibility into the office, too, depending of course on how well I could read the mood in the room. And I certainly horsed around plenty once our marriage delivered a son and daughter.

But life also turned much more serious, especially once I was a father and, in the bargain, the primary breadwinner. Besides, humor on the job, where I spent most of my time, was generally frowned upon. With so much to do — earn a living and raise kids — I toned down my monkeyshines. For a long time — decades, really – I went for laughs less and less often.

I had to grow up. And so, ever-so-gradually, I left behind my longstanding genius for immaturity.

But all that changed in 2018, when I was 66 and our first grandchild, Lucia, was born. From that moment on, my attitude toward being funny pulled a 180. I wanted little more than to hear and see Lucia laugh.

Little in my life has thrilled me more than becoming a grandfather.

Accordingly, I pulled out all the stops. I went full slapstick.

Visually, I’ve played peek-a-boo with my hands, flared my nostrils, curled my tongue, wiggled my ears, arched my eyebrows, flapped my arms, hiked my pants above my belly button, shaken my behind, toddled like a penguin and — naturally — pretended to walk into walls and trip over my own feet.

Vocally, I’ve yodeled in all octaves, spouted gobbledygook and gibberish and issued Bronx cheers not to mention guffawed like a manic chimpanzee, imitated a trumpeting elephant, mooed like a cow, clucked like a chicken, whinnied like a horse and — of course — scatted like Ella Fitzgerald.

And that was all usually before breakfast was served.

Robin Williams once called this kind of riffing going “full-tilt bozo.”

Lucia has turned out to be an appreciative audience. She often bursts into uncontrollable giggling at my antics. She has nicknamed me “Silly Nonno” (nonno is grandfather in Italian). My very name is now synonymous with silliness.

Lucia is a master mimic and often copies my sight gags and parrots my vocal stylings. She also generates her own humor albeit sometimes unwittingly  — a true trouper and comrade-in-arms.

One time, still only age 3, Lucia was reaching for a toy on a high shelf and admitted she was probably too little to get it. I promised her that someday she would be big enough. “Yes,” she replied,” I guess I’m a little big.”

On another occasion, Lucia and I were climbing a five-foot-high mound of dirt in her backyard. The setting afternoon sun cast our shadows on the wall of her house. “Look over there!” I said. “Our shadows!” Lucia promptly ambled over to the wall. “I missed you,” she said to her shadow. Then she hugged it.

The upshot is that she now makes me laugh more than I do her.

Little in my life has thrilled me more than becoming a grandfather. I was proud of our daughter for blossoming into a wonderful mother. And I immediately recognized my new role as an opportunity at overdue self-improvement, a second chance to try to get fatherhood right. This time around I would pay closer attention to our newcomer. I would also pull out all the stops to put her happiness first.

Make no mistake: I’m trying to meet multiple mandates as a grandfather — emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual — but few will ever take higher priority than instilling a serviceable sense of humor.

Life, on the whole, is simply too serious to take too seriously.

That’s why graduating to being a grandfather has — in a single stroke — renewed my license to be silly. All the humor, all the nonsense that I kept largely bottled up in order to function as a responsible adult, I now unleash in the service of this cause. In her presence, at will and with impunity, I’m now free to revert back to my roots as an avid practitioner of vaudevillian slapstick and pantomime — pratfalls, slow burns, double takes, you name it— along with occasional irony and wordplay, too.

After all, I’m the only grandfather Lucia will ever know, so I better forge this connection now. If every moment with her is a teachable moment, then I have to get to her with my stock in trade early, before the world does.

Amusing the mischievous little rascal who already so reliably amuses me seems the least I can do. Only then, equipped with a full-service funny bone, will she be truly ready for whatever life brings her.

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