Twinkle: The Road to Wit Begins in the Nursery

For awhile now, I've thought it was weird that Mr. Twinkle's family doesn't laugh at my always-hilarious jokes. I could come up with the kind of ingenious witty comment that would have all of y'all simply in stitches (and would likely get snappy retorts from all of you), and I will get stone-faced stares from that crowd. As you know, I stopped caring about all this around a month ago, and my mental health is all the better for it.

But I noticed something tonight: they don't laugh at Twinklette's jokes, either.

Twinklette is in a very silly phase. She will make giggly exclamations such as "cock-a-doodle ice cream!" and then laugh hysterically at her own joke, which I always think is funny so I laugh, too. Plus, it's polite to laugh. And "cock-a-doodle ice cream" is the first step towards a witty night of conversation and cocktails with your girlfriends, so I'm damn well going to encourage it.

Well, Twinklette was in a particularly silly mood tonight at Cafe Lou Lou, and was breaking out every number in her two-and-a-half-year-old repertoire, and she didn't get so much as a halfhearted grin from any of them.

I said I don't care what they think about anything, and I really don't. But I wouldn't be the Twinkle you know and love if I didn't enjoy pressing their buttons from time to time. So Twinklette got an extra-silly slice of me tonight, and so did everyone else. Twinklette was pretending to splash everyone as if we were already in Aruba, and I'd say, "Don't splash Grams! Don't you dare splash Grams! Oh no--don't splash Zeide!"...Twinklette thought it was hilarious but none of the pretend-splash recipients played along. We were in a restaurant, but this was by no means a raucous game, Lou Lou is pretty loud, and I doubt if anyone who did happen to overhear us (and I'm pretty sure no one did) would have minded hearing peals of laughter from a small child. What I'm saying is, they couldn't have objected on the grounds that it was obnoxious, because it wasn't. They objected because they haven't a silly bone in their bodies--or a witty one, for that matter. My parents always play along with the silliness, for the record--to extreme degrees.

My in-laws can think whatever they want of me, that I'm irresponsible, don't have my sh*t together as a mother, too uppity, too frivolous. (Although, when a cousin stepped on a bee at a recent picnic, guess who had Band-Aids and Neosporin: Ms. Doesn't-Have-Her-Sh*t-Together). Anyway, y'all know I'm not going to sit around and let anyone turn Twinklette's sparkling personality into the dour demeanor of a strict fourth-grade teacher.