She Has Her Father's Sense Of Humor And Timing

As her guinea pig, Buddy, ran around the room while Em and I talked the other night, Em began to ask me questions about my childhood guinea pig, who was creatively named Streak for the...yup, you guessed it...white streak running along the side of his ginger-colored body.

"Look, Em," I finally said. "You have to remember that, back then, people didn't really think of guinea pigs as needing a lot of room or entertainment or anything. I gave him food and straw bedding and kept him in a tiny fish tank, like the one..."

"Like the one we had Buster in?" she gasped, mouth agape, referring to our recently dead beta fish, who lived in a TINY goldfish bowl.

"No, you silly!" I began to laugh. "I meant the one we kept all our other fish in, our 10-gallon one, NOT the goldfish bowl. Can you imagine a guinea pig in one of those tiny bowls?" It took half an hour for both of us to finally stop giggling at the image of a guinea pig in a goldfish bowl; the minute one would stop laughing, the other would start up. We were incorrigible.

The next day, I had a brainstorm. I went into Em's room and found her little stuffed ginger-and-white guinea pig, and stuffed it into Buster's old goldfish bowl and left it on her desk. She had tears in her eyes from laughing after she walked into her room later that day. I was pleased with my comedic prowess, since it's usually Baroy who gets that kind of response out of her.

But apparently, nine years has been more than enough time for Em to learn a thing or two from her father as well, because when I went into her room to put her to bed last night, I found an addition to the sight gag:



I don't think she's ever been as proud of herself as when I began to roar with laughter. She gloated and preened for the rest of the night.