I am at my brother’s house, sitting at the table with Baby Banshee. We’re eating a healthy lunch of potato chips and potato chips. I peer into the bowl, looking, as I always do, for a folded chip. It’s a little thing I do to keep me from eating all the chips: I can only eat the folded chips, you see. Actually, I’ve done such a good number on myself with this one that I now think they taste better, those folded-over chips.
I pull one out. Baby Bansee, 2 1/2 now, watches me with those huge every-color eyes.
“Look, Banshee. It’s folded. Tee Tee can only eat the folded ones.”
I shove it in my mouth, crunching loudly.
“Mmmmm ….. they taste the best.”
She smiles, then glances down into the bowl, grabs a chip, and waves it at me.
It’s a folded chip.
“Hey! Good job, Banshee! A Tee Tee chip!”
She holds her chubby fist out as if to give me, Tee Tee, the folded Tee Tee chip.
“For me?” I say, reaching for it.
At the last second she snatches her hand away, giggles, and shoves the folded chip into her mouth with every available little finger.
Stinker!
Next, an impromptu game of “Can Tee Tee Eat This?” commences over the red plastic bowl of chips. I pull out a flat chip.
“Banshee, can I eat this one?”
“No, Tee Tee.”
I offer it to her.
“Would you like it?”
“Noo.”
I pull out a folded chip.
“What about this one? Can Tee Tee eat this one?”
“Yesh. Issa Tee Tee chip.”
“Should I eat it?”
“No.”
Hm.
“Soo … do you want it, Banshee?”
“Yesh.”
She reaches her pudgy hand towards me and I succumb, give up the folded chip, because — well, because she’s Baby Banshee, 25 pounds of roly-poly voodoo that render me helpless.
I pull out another flat chip.
“Can I eat this one, Banshee?”
“No. Nodda Tee Tee chip.”
“Do you want this one, Banshee?”
“Noo.”
“Why not?”
“Is nodda Tee Tee chip.”
This is how it goes for several minutes. I want the Tee Tee chips. Banshee wants the Tee Tee chips.
Guess who got them all?
Later that week, my sister-in-law calls to tell me that whenever they eat chips now, Baby Banshee scans the bowl, looking only for the Tee Tee chips.
What this all means for her future, I have no idea.
I love your “Tee Tee stories.
a) I also love your Tee Tee and Banshee stories.
b) Clearly we were separated at birth or some crazypants thing like that and we have to meet someday. On top of our mutual affection and my ongoing enjoyment of every little thing you decide to share on here…
I EAT CHIPS LIKE THAT TOO! And for the same reason. It started to limit how MANY chips I ate, but eventually I realized that I just see the folded chips as the better tasting and, therefore, “better” chips. If it’s folded in quarters or there are two folded together? Oh, LOOK OUT – cause I will throw down over those extra folded chips. As if they have more goodness in them and I MUST have them. My sister actually just hands them to me and says, “Oh, this is one of yours.” Like it’s a given. LOL
Marisa — /If it’s folded in quarters or there are two folded together? Oh, LOOK OUT – cause I will throw down over those extra folded chips./
Hahahahahahaha! I do that, too! “Get OUTTA my way, Slappy! That chip is MINNNE!”
Folded in quarters? Well, that’s just a gift from above. Seriously. I love that.
It’s cracking me up that we both do this, Marisa. Obviously, we must meet — for so many reasons — but we can NEVER eat chips together.
We can definitely never eat chips together… Unless the Banshee is present to referee. In which case, I suspect she would get ALL the “Tee Tee chips” (which is how I will now think of them), but maintain peace.
I think my sister’s tolerance of this behavior comes from the fact that when we were kids, she did NOT like crispy french fries. I did. So any outing to McDonald’s was followed by the french fry equivalent of two kids bargaining over Halloween Candy. I always gave her all the acceptable (read: limp and pitiful) fries from my Happy Meal.
So, now that we’re adults – she’s all in my corner about the chips. I’ve actually heard her tell my mom not to eat all the folded chips, “because then Marisa won’t be able to have any.”
My mom, incidentally, wants to know where she went wrong that she raised two girls with such OCD issues regarding fried potatoes.
Marisa — I love your sister. Hahahahaha. It’s funny because I’m not OCD about much of anything, really, BUT this.
/OCD issues regarding fried potatoes./
Hahahaha.
And yes, Baby Banshee would smile and giggle ALL the chips away from us.
Hey, fried potato products are a serious matter. In my family it’s very simple – my wife loves the crispy small fires that hide out at the bottom of the box, so she gets them all. We call them the nubbins. By rule, my wife must explicitly hand back a nubbin or I can’t eat it.
This becomes a problem when we go to Chick-Fil-A. One of the many ways they are awesome is those fabulous waffle fries, with the Honey BBQ sauce on them. You may as well hand us crack wafers coated in more crack. We are not rational people about our waffle fries.
NF — We have no Chik-Fil-A here in So. C-A.
God doesn’t love us, I guess. Because if he DID, he would give us some damn crack wafers coated in crack!
Pringles must be such a disappointment to you. No Tee Tee chips in that can.
True dat, Brian.
If you eat Aunt Tee Tee’s chips, you will be as cool as Aunt Tee Tee. So simple even a two-year old can get it.
I, too, love all the aunt stories. Those are some wonderful memories they’ll have.
How did that kid catch on to that?? That is one SMART little child, Tee Tee!
The cool aunts always let you in on the good stuff!
My dad is a folded-chip eater, too (and since it came up, yeah I think he’s got mild OCD), but I always thought the broken ones were better for you–you know, they’re uh, smaller. . . even if there are a hundred of them in the bag. . .