A Little Less Conversation

The very merry month of May has begun, and I think something in the air has infected the short people in my house.

Or something.


Scene: Dinner Table
May 1

Oldest: I think I'm done drinking chocolate milk...for today.

Note: We have no chocolate milk in the house.

Me: How much have you had?

Oldest: Ten bottles.

Me: How do you get ten bottles of chocolate milk?

This must have happened at school.

Oldest: People give them to me. They drop them on my tray as they go to throw trash away. So I had ten, and my friend had ten, and we had a chocolate milk drinking challenge, which I won, of course.

Me: Oh, of course. <pause>  Do you think that you're going to fade if you don't drink enough? Your skin color, I mean?

Oldest [laughing]: No.

Middle: Wait, that can happen? Is that why you don't drink chocolate milk?

I sat there and shook my head vigorously and tried not to laugh, but I don't think I convinced her that drinking chocolate milk is the way to keep up her skin tone, or that I avoid it so I won't turn brown. (I just don't like milk.)

[It occurs to me now that I should have told her I eat enough chocolate ice cream to have affected my skin color, but alas, my retort comes too late.]

I must admit that I rather like our new dinner tradition, where the kids clean up and put away the leftovers (on the pitifully rare occasions that we have them, which we did this night) if I've cooked dinner. It's nice.

So, shortly after this...

Oldest: Can you please pass the chicken?

Me: No! You've had two full plates of food!

Middle: Then can I be excused? To go to the bathroom?

Me: Yes, as long as you come back and take care of the dishes and stuff. I will take care of the chicken, because I don't trust you to not sneak another piece [Middle had had five] while putting it away.

Middle: We probably would.


Scene: Dinner Table
May 2

Middle: You have to remember that I am weird. With a capital W. And a capital I. And E. And R. And D.

Me [amused]: Not in that order.

Middle [almost simultaneously]: I think I got that right. Oh. The other way, then.


Scene: Kitchen
Tonight

I'm looking for the canister of knock-off Pringles Hubby bought the other night when I asked him to also get me something to eat when he stopped at the store for something else on his way home from work. They were on the island, and I can't find them. I've had a rough few days with my ankle giving me fits, so it was fend-for-yourself night here. I figured I'd make a sandwich and have some of those chips, even though they felt kinda wrong. (They're about twice the thickness of actual Pringles.) Hubby had, after all, bought some Fritos for himself. I can't eat Fritos anymore. Well, I can, but not without great consequence, so I don't. So I asked the girls if they had seen my canister of chips, which had last been spotted on the island.

They're all shaking their heads.

Oldest: I last saw them here.

Yes, well, there's just a whole lot of here here on the island now. No fat Pringles.

Youngest: I haven't seen any chips.

Middle: Maybe Dad...

And she left the room, presumably going up to Special Edition's room, where Hubby likes to play games on the Xbox when Special Edition isn't living here at home.

I searched the pantry until Middle returned, still not finding chips.

Middle [stepping from stairs into kitchen]: We have a body.

Then she handed me the empty canister.

This kid.


Please, by all means, come to dinner at my house. You never know what's going to happen.