When Paul ordered a new joke book through his school, he was eager to try it out.

“Hey, Dad,” he said. “Do you want to hear the joke about the mushroom?”

“Yeah!” chimed in Kim. “Tell him the joke about the mushroom!”

Paul turned to the right page and read, very deliberately, “What kind of room can nobody go into?”

OK, we’ll bite. What kind? Paul squealed with delight.

“A mushroom!”

So there you have it: The Mushroom Principle.

As our family gets larger, and the kids’ social lives get more complex, we look for ways to cope. The Mushroom Principle has become one way.

According to the Mushroom Principle, the punchline sometimes comes first.

If we don’t know why certain things happen the way they do — if they make no sense — then maybe they’re just the punchline to a story that’s unfolding. Sure enough, the biggest catastrophes often turn out to be the things we laugh about the hardest later on.
Right, Sherry?

Well, sometimes it’s much later.

(From our 1991 family newsletter. I think the Mushroom Principle still applies today, don’t you?)