A Quiz for You: Funny Things Said in Our House

A multiple-choice quiz for you follows. See if you can match each amusing thing said in our house recently with the amusing blonde child who said it. Here are your options:

A. Hillary (age 6)

B. Abigail (age 8)

C. Suzanna (age 10)

___ 1. A child was standing in our bedroom talking to me while I changed out of my clothes for work into something more comfy for the evening. With no warning, I grabbed her and threw her onto our bed, to which she replied, "Well, that was quite unexpected."

___ 2. A child was standing in the kitchen telling me her qualifications to babysit, so I quizzed her by role-playing the part of a parent interviewing her as a potential babysitter for my dozen kids under the age of nine. She went along with it, improvising her answers to my faux interview questions. With each question, I painted a more dismal picture of the situation into which she would be getting herself: in addition to the horde of younguns, I allowed my children to eat only chocolate and drink soda, to stay up until all hours of the night, to play with videogames and guns, etc.; my children were not potty-trained; and my wife and I would be needing her to stay with them for several days, getting them ready for school every day. I pointed out that previous babysitters had the habit of declining the offer to work for us, and--without breaking character or pausing at all--she said, "And what if I were one of those babysitters?"

___ 3. A child was volunteering to perform some household chore, and I asked her if she needed any assistance. Perfectly willing to do it herself, she shrugged and said, "Oh, you could help or help not."

___ 4. I was helping one child at the supper table to understand her homework related to correct usage of punctuation. It turned into a table-wide conversation about using commas (hey, two English majors for parents? whaddya expect?) during which the child whose homework it was gave an example of correct comma use. Her sister said, "Good job!" and then reflected on what she'd just said. She told us that her remark--since it was both a comment and a compliment, both of them related to a comma--must have been a "comma-ment."

___ 5. As I stepped out of the shower one day, a sad-faced child entered the bathroom to tell me, "Daddy, my eyes are sore, and my throat is scratchy, and I've got a sharp pain in my stomach, and my head hurts." I replied, "Oh, but other than that, are you fine?" She thought about it a moment and hesitantly replied, "Yes." I said, "Well, that's good news, isn't it?" She cheered up and observed, "Yes, other than those four things that I said, I'm feeling just fine." [And we got no phone calls from the school secretary that day to report a sick child. Mission accomplished.]

___ 6. I was tickling one child at the supper table and making jokes with Mommy, who was in the kitchen. The tickled child said, "Daddy, you are one outrageous boy."

___ 7. I was working with one daughter on an on-line multiplication activity (to learn her multiplication table), and another daughter came in, observed what we were doing, and said, "I would like to multiplicate."

Okay, submit your answers . . . and good luck!