The kids and I have a lot of fun doing evil laughs. The\u00a0classic “Mwa-hah-hah-hah”\u00a0is our favorite, done in as deep a voice as possible. The variant “Bwa-hah-hah-hah” is also possible. Occasionally, when we’re feeling silly, you might even hear the “evil cow laugh”: “Mooowa-hah-hah-hah.” That one’s my personal favorite.<\/p>\n
Evil laughs work for a couple reasons. First, of course, they’re fun to do. Also, there are few things cuter than a little guy trying to do an evil laugh. They tilt their heads forward, and pull their eye brows down like they’re evil geniuses.<\/p>\n
The big reason, though, is that it’s an early warning system.<\/p>\n
I first discovered this last year, when a friend of mine and I were walking with the kids across Baldwin Park. The kids were playing tag as we walked, orbiting around us like deranged satellites. I kept an eye on them as we walked, but they were pretty much in their own world.<\/p>\n
When I heard the evil laugh from behind me, I glanced back. My oldest, who was six at the time, was sneaking up on us.<\/p>\n
I quickly looked back to the front.<\/p>\n
The evil laugh sounded again, much closer, and the tag was delivered, a solid thunk to my friend’s back. He staggered forward, then joined in the game.<\/p>\n
See what I mean? Giving a kid an evil laugh is like tying\u00a0a bell on a cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evil laughs for fun and profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-c0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}