The Big O

We went to my husband's bros house for dinner last night. He has a little girl whose name begins with an O. For some reason, I was the person of the day. I was all she wanted. From the time we arrived, the two year old was in my arms or leading me all over her house, "Come. Come", she would say.

We played play-doh. We played outside. I played in her big plastic Barbie house. We sang songs. She insisted on sitting in my lap while she ate dinner, which means she ate my dinner, since my food was better. It was just really funny how I was her big toy. In the middle of dinner, she even insisted I take her potty.

Hmmm.

You would think being a woman with the same body parts, this would be no big deal to me. It actually wasn't, as I was being led into the bathroom, "Come. Come." my sister in law is yelling after me, "Are you OK with this?" What am I going to say? I had three boys. I've done the potty training thing. How bad could it be?

Heh. With a boy, it's easy. You sit them down, point it down, and it's over. A girl... Blech. The problem was that I got her on the potty and as she insisted she had to watch herself pee. Well, with a boy, that's easy, they just look between their legs. With a girl, she contorts her spine, twists around, and... pees all over the seat!!! Then there is this whole wiping thing... Geez. What a pain. Boys are so easy.

OK, so now for the title of this post. In my family, when we all get together, we get a plastic cup and a sharpie, and The Great Omnipotent One puts everyone's name on their cup and that's what you use for the day. My youngest has a nickname. We call him 'Bones'. So a skull and crossbones are drawn with 'bones' written under it.

We get to my bro in law's house and there are cups and a sharpie. They've taken on this tradition from my parent's and my houses. It just makes life easier. I pick up the Sharpie and write, "the Big "T"' for Son#2, "The little 'g'" for Son#1 (named for his father), and I write Bones on the third cup with the traditional skull and crossbones.

I look at my bro in law who is carrying on about how proud he is of himself that he didn't teach his daughter to call me by the nickname he gave me "rat" (reference to Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and I said, "Good thing. I'd hate to start writing on her cup, "The Big O"'.

He didn't think it was funny. He best not tempt me.