Orange you going to laugh at my hilarious joke, mom?

Over spaghetti last night, my 8-yearold asks, “’What did Obi-Wan say to Luke Skywalker at dinner time? ... May the forks be with you.’”

He laughed so hard I thought milk would shoot out his nose.

It’s knock-knock joke after pun after play on words in my house right now.

Sawyer sidles up to me and asks, “Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide. Get it, Mom? The other SLIDE.”

Oh, I get it. It’s the 19th time he’s told it.

This newly discovered sense of humor is more striking than at any other age. At 7 and 8, kids figure out that the same word can have two meanings.

School-age humor can get a little tiresome, but there’s much to be gained from this new love of jokes. Playing with language builds vocabulary. Repeating jokes builds memory.

The other day after school, Sawyer’s friend, Parker, came over. They traded jokes at the table over a snack.

Parker told one that went something like this:

“A panda walks into a restaurant and orders lunch. When he’s done eating, he pulls out a gun, shoots the piano player and gets up to leave.

“‘Hey, wait a minute!’ the restaurant owner shouts. ‘You can’t just come in here, eat, shoot my piano player and leave!’

“The panda says, ‘Sure, I can. Look it up.’ And he leaves.

“The restaurant owner pulls out a dictionary and looks up panda. It says, ‘A large bear-like animal of the mountains of China and Tibet, with distinctive white and black markings. Eats shoots and leaves.’”

Both boys howl with laughter. After a minute, Sawyer says, “I don’t get it.” There’s a pause. Parker shrugs: “Me, either.”

At least his delivery was good.