Catchin' Cooties

WIFEZILLA:  Is this gonna be heartwarming?

TACO:  Yep.

WIFEZILLA:  Is he gonna get together with the girl?

TACO:  Yep.

WIFEZILLA:  Are they gonna kiss?

TACO:  No!  That's how you get cooties!

WIFEZILLA:  Depends on what you kiss.

TACO:  Well played, madam.

Thanks for the help, I guess?

Kiddo makes me proud.

KIDZOOKIE: Those aren't zombies. Zombies can't run. That's a zomgie.

TACO: The hell's a zomgie?

KIDZOOKIE: As in Z-O-M-G.

They're young, not dumb.

I feel compelled to reiterate this. It's the root of an argument I've had repeatedly with some of my friends.

I never let the kids win when we play games or otherwise compete. I do place constraints on my own efforts to keep things fair, but within those constraints, I play my damnedest to win.  Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.  They're learning to do both more gracefully, and as they get better and better, I have to constrain myself less and less.

The kids in the neighborhood have taken to playing Pokemon, and my son's in the thick of it.  In his enthusiasm for the game, he begged his mother and me to buy decks so he could play against us.  I picked up my deck this week and let him teach me.  I lost the first few games while I got a feel for the mechanics of it, then started reliably beating him while he picked up my tricks.  It was a lot of fun, especially since he's grown enough to get competitive instead of whiny in the face of it.

Apparently, I now have a reputation as the man in the neighborhood to beat.  My doorbell rang a short while ago, and one of my son's friends was on the porch, Pokemon deck in hand.  We informed him that our son was out of town, but would be back next week, to which he responded that he was here to play against me.

Heh.

Take note, folks.  It's not just my kids who like to be challenged.

His sarcasm is developing nicely.

KIDZOOKIE:  I got a hundred on two tests in a row.

TACO:  Kick ass.  I'm proud of you; you're really smart.  What tests?

KIDZOOKIE:  Science and math.

TACO:  Okay, so you're studying fractions in math.  What was the science test on?

KIDZOOKIE:  Planets and stuff.

TACO:  Astronomy is awesome.

KIDZOOKIE:  Not like all of them though, just the sun, the moon, and the stars.

TACO:  Cool, what did you study about them?

KIDZOOKIE:  Like how they light themselves.

TACO:  Well, the sun lights itself.

KIDZOOKIE:  But the moon doesn't, I know.  The stars do, though.

TACO:  What are stars made of?

KIDZOOKIE:  Gases.

TACO:  That have turned into?

KIDZOOKIE:  Stars.

TACO:  Touche.

Donny, you're out of your element.

KIDZOOKIE: When I grow up, I'm going to open Kidzookie's Awesome Restaurant, and the largest ice cream cone is going to be this big. [gestures]

TACO: Really? Because at Taco's Awesome Restaurant, that's our smallest cone. If you order the large one, three waiters have to help you carry it to the table.

KIDZOOKIE: Well at mine, it takes five waiters.

TACO: If you order it to go, they have to bungee the cone to a trailer behind your car.

KIDZOOKIE: At mine, you need a truck to pull the trailer, and the trailer better be covered so you don't get bugs in your ice cream.

TACO: If you order the extra large, the American President invokes a police action against you so he doesn't have have to get a Congressional declaration of war, sticks you in Guantanamo Bay, executes you, admits he couldn't find the Weapons of Mass Consumption, then hangs around your house for years while Jon Stewart makes fun of him.

KIDZOOKIE: What?

Thanks for clearing that up.