Quintessential Blue

      There are a few Blue stories that get repeated often in my house when we feel the need to explain our oldest to the uninitiated.

1), Whose the Boss?

      We were living in a tiny apartment near Central Square in Cambridge shortly after Doc was born. Blue was a precocious two and a half year old and really not much bigger than a peanut. I had just put Doc down for his nap when the doorbell rang. I answered the door to find a man trying to deliver a king sized mattress to our upstairs neighbor. Our neighbor was not home, but I offered to give him a hand up to the second floor platform. As we wrestled the mattress up the stairwell, the man started trying to sell me a mattress. Turns out, he owned the stored. I tried to put him off, but he was very persistent. Finally I said, “Look I really have to talk to the Boss about this.”

Enter Blue into the hallway, naked of course.

         “Daddy, whose the Boss?”

         “Well, honey, Mommy is the Boss.”

She thought about this for a moment, then put her hands on her hips defiantly.

         “I thought I was the Boss!”

2). Just Because

         Shortly after that incident, we were visiting my older brother in Maine. It must have been July, because the Black Flies were swarming around us. Blue wanted to stay out in the yard and I was trying to get her inside without donating any more blood to the invertebrate population. She stood on the picnic table, naked of course, hands on her hips with a well reasoned argument at the ready:

         “Daddy, just because you’re older than me it doesn’t make you SMARTER than me!”

         “Honey, no one would ever mistake me for being smarter than you. But…….I am bigger and stronger than you!!”

Exit one Daddy, with screaming naked child over his shoulders.

  

BLUE's Rebuttal:

 

I will keep it brief - It's all true. I am the boss.

And also, at two years old (and three, and four, and five, and six) being naked was just about the best thing ever.