Two days ago, on our way back from a dentist appointment for all three girls, I broke the news to Twin B that she might have to have a couple of teeth removed. Trying to make it not seem so bad—but stopping short of calling it having them “wiggled,” as the dentist put it—I said, “It won’t be bad, and you’ll get laughing gas and everything!”
“Oh, I’ve had that, it’s so cool!” said Twin A.
“I’ve had it, too!” piped up Little Miss.
“No you haven’t!” argued Twin A. “You’ve never had laughing gas!”
Her genius retort: “Yes I have! Sometimes when I laugh real hard, a biiiiig gas comes out. That’s laughing gas!”
Some sitcom writer should steal that line.
But perhaps even more charming was the fact that this particular day happened to be President’s Day. Little Miss had been so excited about it in the days leading up to it. I had no idea why, seeing as she’s not in school yet so it wasn’t a “day off” for her. But I soon figured it out after she woke up all excited and asked where her presents were.
She thought it was “Presents Day.”
Boy, was she disappointed.
It reminded me of a time back when her older sisters were 2 and we dropped them off at my parents’ so we could go vote in the 2000 presidential election. I said, “Grandma and Grandpa are going to watch you so that Poppy and I can go vote for president.”
Twin A said, “You are going on a boat for presents? OK!”
Come to think of it, we might as well have taken a boat to the polling place, seeing as that was the year of all those ballot miscounts in Florida (remember the year of the “hanging chad?”) and it was days before we even knew who won.
Then that reminded me of another time when the twins were around 2 and just starting to talk a lot, but not yet saying all their consonants. Especially when it mattered, like this: We were in a checkout line at a store, where a man ahead of us had a giant tattoo of the American flag on his cheek. Noticing this, Twin B says quite loudly, “Yat man yooks yike a FAG!”
The man, wearing a wife beater that fully exposed his rather large arms covered in many more tattoos, turned around and looked at us and…laughed. Phew! He walked out the door and toward a huge Harley in the parking lot. I’m pretty sure he was not what Twin B thought he looked like. Not at all.
With kids like these, it’s no wonder we don’t really watch sitcoms anymore. We don’t need to. But that doesn’t mean we don’t miss the good ole days when Thursday nights meant Seinfeld and Friends. Even our kids couldn’t compete with them.