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.