grillsidestories

Thursday morning Sept 6th, I’m awakened out of my sleep by Nariah tapping on me.
“Daddy, Daddy…. Did the Cowboys win last night? Did they beat the Giants?”
**YAWN** “Huh? What? Oh… Yeah baby, they did! They won!”
“YES!” (Accompanied by a Tiger Woods fist pump) (<– yes, click on that link for a visual effect)
“So… does this mean I can wear my Cowboys Jersey to school today?”
“Ha ha, yes baby, you can”
“YES!” (Accompanied by yet another Tiger Woods fist pump) (<– yes, click on that link too for a different visual effect)

***Fast forward to after school care pick up***

I picked up Nariah from school and decided to take her to the Amish Market because I saw a sign on the way to school saying “Pig Roast”. I thought this would be a pretty good spur of the moment adventure. So we mosey on up the street to the shopping center where its located and to our dismay, it closed at 6 on Thursdays. It was already 6:45. So while we’re standing there deciding what to do, Carol, a co-worker of mine drives up. We talk for a bit, and then out of the blue, I remember that Carol is a Giants fan.

“Oh yeah, Nariah, Ms Carol is a Giants fan! Can you believe that?”
Nariah scrounges up her face.
“Nariah, don’t tell me, you’re a cowboys fan?”
“Yes”
“Ryan, what did you do to this child?”
“Nothing! She has her own free will in our house, I can’t help if she chooses to likes daddy’s team. Go ahead baby, show Ms Carol what you have on.”

Nariah smiles shyly and then walks up to the passenger door, tiptoes up, and pulls up her jersey by the top of the numbers (You know how the pros do when they make a good play and draw attention to themselves). Now I honestly didn’t expect all this so naturally Carol and I are laughing. Nariah turns around to walk away from the car, takes 2 steps, pauses, backs up one step, and then lifts up the back of her jersey by the shoulders so that Carol can see the name “Witten” on the back. Wow! Totally not ready for that one!

“That’s ok Nariah, we’re gonna get the next one!”
“No you’re not, we’re going to win the Superbowl!”
“Well you know we just won the Superbowl”
“Yeah… and you guys have 4 trophies!” Nariah actually says this with awe and amazement and I was actually proud that she was giving credit to the opponents.
“That’s right, we do! We have 4 trophies!”
“But you know what??? We have….. 5!!!!!”

You know how kids sit around joking on each other back and forth? Then one kid gets a really good one in and everybody goes “Oooooooooooooooooh” and starts laughing? Well that’s what this felt like. I almost felt bad for Carol but I also felt like I had to follow up Nariah with a delayed, deep bass induced “YEAH“. So… after I stopped laughing, that’s what I did. I thought I was done before, but this one took the cake. Poor Ms. Carol. All she could do was acknowledge that Nariah was indeed my clone, say her goodbyes, and then leave (still laughing of course). I don’t blame her, I don’t know what more Nariah may have said and I might not have been able to stop laughing at that point.