My Daughters Would NEVER Do That!

Last week, I ran into one of my daughter's classmates and her mother at a local park. Ignoring the fact that I was deeply engrossed in the most recent issue of Us Weekly, the mom plopped down beside me and proceeded to catalog the atrocities associated with her most recent trip to the mall. The day before she had taken her three young daughters shopping at the local knick knack store for teacher gifts only to be met with opposition in the form of a pack of elderly women on a field trip from a nearby assisted living facility.

"The old ladies bought up all the dollar candles!" she complained. "And the discontinued hand lotions. One woman had ten in her cart! I was so mad that I almost said something."

The woman's riveting tale of clearance bins and close calls with senior citizen bargain shoppers was interrupted by one of my five-year-old sons, who poked my arm with his forefinger until I acknowledged his presence.

"Watch this!" he said once I made eye contact. Tilting his head slightly forward, my son opened his mouth and, with painstaking precision, released a thin string of saliva from his rolled tongue. He let the spit trickle downward in a continuous stream until it was level with his knee caps, at which point he sucked it back up into his mouth with a violent inhale.

That's fabulous," I said, congratulating my son on his impressive achievement. "Now go do your trick over there." I pointed him in the direction of the sand pit, where a legion of potentially eager pupils were playing.

After my son was out of earshot, I turned back to the mom, anxious to hear how her near death experience at mall ended. "I'm sorry," I said. "You were saying?"

To my surprise, the mom's face was twisted into a scowl. "I don't know what to say," she said finally.

"Huh?"I asked, genuinely confused. The woman pointed to the place where my son had been standing. The spot was marked with a puddle of mucous the size of a quarter.

"My daughters would never do that," she snorted.

I didn't doubt her.

A few days later, the woman brought her six-year-old daughter over to my house for a play date, chaperoned by herself of course. In honor of the special occasion, I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I smiled as I watched my daughter's friend consume her treat. I stopped smiling when, without warning, a partially chewed cookie spilled out of the girl's mouth, down her chin, down her shirt, and onto my kitchen rug.

"Eeew!" girl screeched, clawing at her tongue.

I handed the girl a cup of water, which the girl's mother used to wet a handful of paper towels. As the mom frantically scrubbed her daughter's shirt in a vain attempt to remove the chocolate skid marks before the stain set in, I sat on my hands and stared longingly at my camera, which was sitting on the kitchen counter.

After cleaning up the cookie vomit and drenching her daughter's clothes with Spray & Wash, the mom informed me that her daughter didn't like cookies with nuts.

At that exact moment, my five-year-old twin boys were each eating their fifth cookie. A row of walnut pieces circled the perimeter of their paper plates.