Going Blond

When my daughter was an infant, she had flaming red hair. Gradually it has become blonder and blonder. I think I see why.

She likes to scroll through the phonebook on my cell phone looking for names she recognizes. Sometimes when she sees a name she doesn't know, she'll ask me about it. We do this periodically. She doesn't have great memorization skills. We had this little back-and-forth in the van the other day:

"Daddy, who is Becky M.?"

"I told you sweetie. That's Claire's mom. Remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

Click, click, click.

"Daddy…who is Sam Evans?"

"For the fourth time baby, he's Daddy's friend from The Citadel. He's the funniest guy I know."

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Then she had an "aha" moment. I knew so because she said, "Aha!" I looked in her direction. She must have thought I'd been holding out, keeping her from the grandparent she never knew. Her gaze and her tone were accusatory.

"So Daddy…who is this Papa Johns?"

My son's eyes rolled so hard, I thought he would do a back flip in his seat. He had to be thinking "Damn!" because that's what Daddy was thinking and came close to saying out loud.

"It's the pizza place, Nikki! What are you thinking?"

"Oh," she said. And it wasn't even an I'm-so-silly "Oh," either. It was a That-explains-it "Oh."

Then it dawns on me that perhaps she's the smarter between us. Perhaps she's doing this on purpose. Hmm…