The Yin Of Parenthood

A cool thing that I have with my son, that nobody told me might happen, is that we have inside jokes.
I know every family has funny stuff that only people in the family get. I can say to my sister, "remember the time we tied Jake's leash to Ryan's stroller?" and she knows exactly what I'm talking about and we can both laugh.

But I'm not talking about that. I can say "play ball wetbacks!" and she gets the joke...but it's not emblematic.

I'm talking about the idea of a single word or a simple phrase, and it may not even have any real meaning, it's funny because it's just something you and your friend know and nobody else does.

You can look at a friend and say "have you seen my baseball?" and your friend high fives you.

Makes no sense to anybody but you 2.

I don't think I had stuff like that with my parents.
(I do with my sister)

I do with Turbo.....it's one of those little joys that I didn't really expect. I'm not a "buddy parent" but I do have these cool things with my boy that I never had with my dad.

At a very early age he grasped the concept that if I am holding forth on an opinion that someone else does not agree with he will back me up unilaterally, even if he has no clue what we're talking about.

When he was about 7 years old I was having a jokey kind of argument with a girlfriend of mine. I was espousing some absurd, indefensible position for the sake of being a butt head. She said, "Turbo, what do you think?"

He said " I agree with my dad" even though he knew for a fact I was talking crap.

She expressed outrage.

He shrugged.

I said "Bro's before Ho's" and put my fist out for a pound, which he eagerly gave me.

That miffed her even further.
Well played son

Later he came up to me, "Dad, what does that mean, 'Bro's before Ho's'?"

"I'll tell you when you're older buddy"

This past summer my sister...
Hang on...Hey Sister? Everybody I write about gets a pseudonym, in case someday somebody outside our little circle actually reads this....so what would you like for a pseudonym?

Ok. So, my sister became a little obsessed with LOLCATS. I got into it too and Turbo really took to it. It appeals to his absurdist sense of humor.

( his sense of humor is very much in the genre of Tom Greene and Monty Python(which I recently turned him on to) ... among others)

This one in particular became sort of our catchphrase of the summer:



All summer long, if I wanted to make him laugh or vice versa? We'd just say,
SO...MUCH...PURPLE...in the acting style of Shatner.

Now that's an inside joke.