Laughter

Great minds have struggled to explain humor and laughter. There are many views, some dark, some not, mostly involving release of tension or agression. For example:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/kincaid2/intro2.html
I disagree. Maybe none of these eggheads had kids. Kids are funny, sometimes hilarious. If an adult did the goofy things a kid does, we would not always laugh. We would more likely grin and mutter, "Idiot." My simple theory is that humor is in us as a way to protect children from negative feelings when they do or say things that show a poor understanding of the world. All humor involves some kind of mistake or missed meaning, something almost but not quite understood. That is what children do in the face of a complex language and a complex world.

"Doctor, am I going to die?"
"Thats the last thing you're going to do."

How do you make a bandstand?
Take away their chairs.

A mushroom walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "No mushrooms. Get out" The mushroom says, "Hey what's wrong? I'm a fun guy."

Why don't Amish people water-ski?
The horses would drown.

Now for a true story:
I was in a grocery store, and in the frozen food section, at one of those open top freezers, a child was leaning in, scraping the frost off the top of the ice cream. I heard her say, "Boy are my hands cold!" Then she looked up at me and said, "I'm not talking to you. I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."

Not hilarious, but similar to a joke: Words create meanings that bang together to make us laugh.