day 42: homeward bound with stories of parrots and peeing

The eight hours I was to spend in the car on this day loomed over me.

Each potty stop and gas stop and bickering from the backseat only prolonged the time and instigated a headache.

But there were two precise moments that made it hard for me to see through the tears in my eyes....tears from violent laughter.

One of the girls was reading a book that mentioned a parrot, and I asked the girls if I had ever told them my parrot story....
Years ago, after ASC and I were married but B.K. (before kids), we traveled to Tennessee to visit with one of his Marine buddies, Mike. We stayed at Mike's grandmother's house, an abode that also housed her grandson Robbie and a chatty parrot. It was quickly apparent to us that Robbie and Gma didn't get along well, because the parrot was constantly retorting, "Shut up, Robbie! Shut up, Robbie!" Funny at first, but then, quite annoying. That first night came, and we found that we'd be sleeping on the sleeper sofa--feet away from the parrot. Gma thought that if she placed a sheet over the bird's cage at night, it'd sleep. She was dead wrong. Just as ASC and I had finally got comfortable on the lumpy, thin mattress, we heard a deep, low growl. Could've swore there was a lion in the room.....a lion with a parrot-y growl. Yes, the parrot was growling. We both burst into laughter. What came next? Laughter. The parrot laughed at us, in a perfect, "Ha, ha ha!" Which made us laugh even more, and then, "Shut up, Robbie!" The bird kept cycling through his favorite phrases and sounds until we laughed ourselves to sleep.

....the girls enjoyed this little tale so much that they had me tell it to them three times over the course of the afternoon.

And then a potty stop somewhere in Ohio brought on new fits of laughter. A gas station restroom, certainly not the nastiest I'd ever been in, had a toilet and a urinal. Then came the inevitable question: Mommy, why can boys use those but I can't?

I told her it was because boys had parts that girls didn't.

Which made K blush.

And made R launch into her own story.....of all the times at daycare that she's seen boys go potty, and how they don't have just one "hangy thing", and then she modeled for us how boys stand when they pee. Wow. That was just about all I could say, through my laughter and tears.