Becoming a parent is an odd experience.

Children never seem that interesting before you have them. In fact they seem down right boring. Once they’re happening to you, though, each new advance they make is astounding, like your arm dropping off and starting to talk to you.

They are the most impressive conjuring trick the universe has to offer. You’re there for the whole thing, looking behind every curtain, peering up every sleeve, but you still don’t have a clue how the astonishing trick was done. Where did they come from? How did they happen? Of course people without kids roll their eyes, your amazement is deeply boring, but you can’t help it.

And now your offspring does something more amazing and wonderful than anything that he’s done before.

He makes up a joke.

Not a rubbish joke, either. An actual funny joke. There are people who go their whole lives without doing that. Mostly politicians.

My son likes saying “No”. We call him “Dr. No”. On long car journeys he loudly practices his “No”s, like an ambitious actor rehearsing for a very small part. When he’s in a grump, he unleashes his “No”s, and we have a “No” war. He says “No”, to anything, doesn’t matter what, and in response, I say “Yes”.

It goes like this. No. Yes. Nooo! Yeees. Noooooo! Yeeeees. Nooooooooo! etc. You get the picture. The more drawn out and Pantomime Dame my “Yes” gets, the more annoyed he gets. Eventually he gives up, enraged, and I win on a technicality. Not text book parenting perhaps, but fun.

The other day, in the midst of a long “No” war, as his “No”s reached an angry crescendo, after my “Yes”, his face suddenly changed. He smirked, and without missing a beat, he put his finger in the middle of his face and said “Nose.”

We both laughed and laughed. Still makes me chuckle.

Three years ago, there was nothing. Now, there’s someone who’s funnier than I am.

How the heck did that happen?