Although my parents were never one bit funny, it somehow ended up that my siblings and I are all pretty darned hilarious ... or in our case Hi-Larry-us, as the oldest of my trio of younger brothers is the funniest of the bunch and happens to be named Larry.

Luckily for our folks, none of us figured out how completely we cracked them up until we reached the stage that they no longer had to force themselves into straight faces to dole out discipline. Nope. We had no clue that there was a lot of fine-line-walking between stern and chortle, so remained thoroughly intimidated throughout childhood.

My family's humor tends to run the gamut from slapstick to high-brow, or what passes for high-brow when wetting one's self is one likely outcome.

We have our individual styles, of course. Larry is notoriously droll in his own dry-straight-faced way that usually ends in the slightest of that-went-well smiles as the rest of the world is rolling on the floor, while others of us are belly laughers.

One thing that gets all of us anytime, however, is goofiness.

Goofiness takes many forms in my family, from nonsense song lyrics, to funny walking, to "What's this on the front of your shirt"-like annoying, to silly faces ... not everyone's gaggle of giggles, we all freely admit, but it creases us.

As often happens, children grow up to suffer the tortures they imposed on their parents. This has been the fate my brothers and I have faced since stepping into the parental role ... our kids are funny as all get out.

Sam and Cj are, of course, no exception, having inherited the goofy gene through some form of adoption osmosis. They are naturally goofy, and choose a goof response over others more often than most folks would expect little kids to.

My in-laws and others spend a lot of time wondering if the joke's on them, as not all the goofy translates, but Sam is already proficient in explaining his humor, although it's clear he doesn't quite understand such a pedantic reaction to what is so obviously funny.

One truly great aspect of the way goofy spreads in my family is that it's even, and in my house that means that Sam 'gets' Cj, and Cj 'gets' Sam. There's no performing to an empty room in this house ... no, sir! It's a laugh a minute around here, and you can hear it from the other side of the valley.

So, on a Love Thursday, or any time: All hail goofiness!

I have the perfect shot to go here, but won't post it because Sam is naked in it. Will you take my word for it that it's HI-larious? This one will do.