MyThreeDaughters

So Rosebud, she’s just two and a half. Third kid. Total rock by necessity, both physically and, uh, attitudinally.

She’s not big, but she’s massive in personality. She speaks like, I don’t know, a five-year-old, a six- or seven-year old? The point being, I had just read her three pre-bedtime (HINT HINT, CHICKIE!) books and was ready to put her into the crib, and she stiffened like a board and refused.

C’mon, it’s bedtime, let’s get you into the crib, said I, using the common parental plural “let’s” in an attempt to seem like a whole bunch of parents in order to get what I want. It’s time for sleep.

And here’s where it came in, a round-house uppercut from the right side that I just didn’t see coming.

“That’s your idea,” Rosebud said, “That’s not MY idea.”

What? I wasn’t sure I heard that. Then I suggested the bed thing again, and she came back again with that.

“That’s YOUR idea. That’s not MY idea.”

Oh man, what a rhetorical steel wall. Wouldn’t it be great to use that, say, at a corporate board meeting after listening to a really long, boring build up for a proposal?

Couldn’t you shut up somebody like even Rush Limbaugh, or wouldn’t you like to, with a, “That’s YOUR idea. That’s not MY idea.”?

Oh, the possibilities were running rampant in my mind when she interrupted me one more time.

“Daddy, what’s a IDEA?”