A couple of years ago I was at a restaurant with my friend, Bean, enjoying some cold beer and an order of spinach and artichoke dip when our waitress came by the table to see how we were doing. She stayed to chat for a few minutes.

After she walked away, Bean looked at me and said, “You have some spinach in your teeth.”

“What?”

“You have some spinach in your teeth.”

I had not taken a bite since before our server stopped by. “Seriously? You mean, it was there the whole time we were talking to her?”

Bean replied, “Well, I didn’t want to say anything in front of her. Maybe she didn’t notice.”

“Right! Because all that laughing and smiling was completely hiding my teeth!”

Night before last, I went to happy hour with my husband and some of his employees. There was a woman sitting directly across from me whom I had never met.

Because she could apparently sense how boring I am, she ordered a shot of tequila as soon as I sat down. After she had finished, I noticed a bit of salt was left on her cheek.

Bean went and traumatized me, so I couldn’t take my eyes off of the salt and I felt like I had to tell her. After a few seconds, I leaned across the table and discreetly said, “You have a little something on your cheek.”

She thanked me and we went about our evening. I sat next to my husband’s boss and talked for about an hour before leaving.

And wouldn’t you know that when I arrived at home I looked in my bathroom mirror to find a lovely chunk of fried mozzarella stuck to my chin?

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My son was on the phone with my Mom, who he calls Vo-Vo (it’s Portuguese for grandma), when suddenly he blurted out, “Hey Vo-Vo! You know the biggest book in your house? Well, I love you all the pages in that book!” Apparently, he thought up a new version of his “I love you to infinity game”.

I smiled as he listened to her then he said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I love you 10,000 miles.”

I looked over at my little guy, fresh from a bath, all cozy on the couch in his Mario pajamas and I started to get teary. He looked so perfect and sweet, holding the phone to his ear and it melted my heart to hear him talking to my Mom like that.

Again, he took in her reply, “Oh! Uh-huh. Well, I love you all the way into space in a rocket ship.”

He listened again as she tried to top him and I should have known the heart-melting wouldn’t last.

Because he then grew tired of his own game when he let out a big sigh then said, “You know what? I think we tied.”

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It is every parent’s hope and dream that their children will turn out better than they did. We wish for better opportunities, less stress and more intelligence for our offspring.

When I play with our new puppy, Daisy, I get down on the floor and talk in puppy language. I say things like, “Let me rub that super-duper, pupper-wupper, Buddha, frog belly and those oogley-googley ears!”

Yesterday, my ten year old daughter was romping on the floor with Daisy when I heard her say, “Daisy! How in the world can you be holding me down when you don’t even have opposable thumbs?”

If our puppy talk is any indication, this kid already has me beat in the intelligence department.

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Yesterday at school, my son exhibited some peculiar behavior when he wouldn’t stop following the principal around. At one point, she came to the second grade classroom where I work to see if I could help, but once my son saw me coming, he turned and went straight to his class.

Later, during a school musical, he asked his teacher if he could sit with the principal and she obliged. As his class was being dismissed, I came out to the hall to see him tailing the poor woman once again. And to top it off, he was doing all of this in silence, like a mime, and we all know how much everybody loves a mime. Oh, wait…

All this? Is not because he has special needs. It is because he’s trying to be funny. When he first started playing the “Me and My Shadow” game, with my boss, I heard her laugh as he was silently standing before her and she asked, “What in the world are you doing?” That was all he needed. One little chuckle and that comic’s bread was slathered with butter.

I was trying to explain this to some parents at soccer practice last night. They both know my son, but neither of them had recognized that he does some strange stuff in an attempt to be funny.

A short time later we looked over to the field where my son was playing goalie during a scrimmage. There were 20 kids waiting for him to kick the ball out to the middle so play could resume. A typical kid would have seen an eager mob, jumping up and down and yelling, “Kick it! Kick the ball!” My son saw a captive audience.

Instead of kicking the ball to his teammates, he slowly walked around to the other side and kicked it into his own goal. The one he was supposed to be protecting.

I turned to the dad I had just been talking to and asked, “See? You see what I mean? He thinks he’s being funny.”

He replied, “Well…he kind of is.”

He might as well have pulled a butter knife out of his pocket.

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