Deja Vu all Over Again

Kids. I have two - girls, actually. This has its advantages of course - namely my house is still standing, which may not have been the case if I had a couple of boys. As you can well imagine, there are the disadvantages too. For one, they never stop talking. Never. They talk so much, and so often that as they grow they need to add more people into their social circle, just so they can continue to talk. My eldest daughter is a prime example of this. Typically she will disembark from the bus, yak and boss her little sister all the way up the driveway and into the house, where she will shed (literally) her coat with the backpack still attached by the coats arms onto the floor and (still talking) pick up the phone to call her friend down the street who is just getting off the bus and into the house herself. Once she finishes that conversation she then sits around the house waiting for one of three suitable opportunities to speak to me. Generally they are: when I have just sat down on the toilet, when I have just picked up the telephone, or when I am doing some extreme feat of mental or manual labor that requires exacting concentration so that I do not accidentally write out a check for my entire bank balance instead of the bill amount or become dismembered in some way. The conversation usually goes something like:

Scenario: Me, initiating one of the tasks above, after all of us have been home for two hours with both children in a television induced catatonia, neither one of them acknowledging I am alive since they’ve been home from school.

Daughter: “Mom, you know what I want for Christmas?! (This conversation, of course will take place in July) I want this thing, you plug it into the TV and it’s a game, it like a Mall thing, I’m not sure what it’s called but it’s at Target and it’s on sale, and there’s a coupon, in the book that they sent in the mail. Grandma gave it to me and I brought it home for you, OK Did ya see it, huh mom?, huh?”

Me: grunting “Oh, uh…. Yeah, honey…..hm-mm”

Daughter: “Mom, do you know if you do 01134 on a calculator and turn it upside down it says “hello”!? That’s reeeeeally cool. Look, you see?? Can you see it, huh?”


Me: “Hmm-mm. Uh, ….yeah…yeah…cool”

Daughter: “Mom, what would happen if someone who never drove before was driving and the gas was on E and they didn’t know what that meant and they thought it meant engage, what would happen? Mom, what does engage mean??”


Me: Heaving something really, really heavy and difficult or expensive to replace
“Uh… wh- what?”

Daughter: “If you were on a desert island and could only eat one food for the rest of your life would it be 1. Spaghetti 2. Stinky cheese or 3. Roasted pig.”


Me: Swearing and slamming something down
“&*^%$#@! Jesus Kee-Reist Almighty!” What is it with you kids!

Why is it NOBODY has ANYTHING to say to me until I sit on the toilet, pick up the gaddam telephone, or start doing something. Then everybody wants to talk. Why is that!?! Do you have to tell me all of this RIGHT NOW? Huh!

Hm-mm. Somehow, I seem to get a funny little déjà vu feeling whenever one of these exchanges takes place. (I also think I hear someone laughing….hm-mm…)