(Third installment in an apparent series.)
Lucy has just cut herself with her scissors. Bactine and Band-Aids have been applied. The tears have stopped. What remains is Lucy’s desire to hear stories about times that Bob and I have cut ourselves with scissors.
I tell her about the time I cut my thumb with an x-acto knife. I tell her about the time I cut my hand with a butcher knife while slicing a bagel.
Zoe tells her about the time she cut her own-own hand in her own-own town when she was chopping cucumbers with her own-own mom.*
Lucy sums up. “So all the girls have cut themselves. But not the boys.”
Zoe turns to Bob. “Daddy? Have you ever cut yourself with a knife?”
Bob: “More times than I can count.” (Which is true, bless his perforated heart.)
Lucy: “Like a billion times?”
Bob: “No. More like twenty.”
Zoe: (Rolling her eyes.) “Daddddy. You can count to twenty.”
Bob: ?
Me: “You said you had cut yourself more times than you can count.”
+ + +
* Zoe and Lucy’s pretend world — their “own-own” whatever is their pretend (and improved) version of that thing. They each have an own-own mom and dad (who are far more permissive than we are), and an own-own house, which has all the toys they could imagine, etc.
hilarious.
That’s friggin’ cute. The things they come up with… my daughter makes up stories that always happened, as in past tense, in two weeks, as in toward the future. She’s chronologically inaccurate, but too damn cute to bother with explanations.
Is that what it means when someone says they “like” me, but they don’t “like like” me?
These kids don’t let us get away with anything.
Both smart and smart-ass. That’s my kind of kid!
She’s brilliant.
Also, this is an official request for Halloween photos.