GEORGE! and I are driving back from the grocery store when Leta, who is sitting in the backseat, starts rattling off a long list of demands, stopping just short of an Oompa Loompa. I can’t hear her at all over the hum of the air conditioning, so I turn it down, twist my head so that my good ear is facing her, and ask her to repeat herself. And the whole time I’m bracing for GEORGE! to make fun of me for acting like such a granny, because let’s face it, GEORGE! does not ever pass up a chance to pick on me. But then, I would never pass up a chance to pick on him, that’s just the dynamic of our family, and when I die I will be disappointed if one of my cousins doesn’t secretly slip his dirty socks into my open casket.

But he doesn’t say anything, and me wanting to explain things, I tell him that I have a hard time hearing, I don’t know why, could just be old age. And he says he has really bad hearing, too. So I start to wonder if maybe it’s hereditary when he says, “Yeah, it’s so bad sometimes that I’ll be making out with a girl and she’ll lean in to whisper something sweet in my ear, and I’m all WHAAAAAAT? WHAAAAT DID YOU SAY? CAN YOU REPEAT THAT?”

Charm. It runs in our family, too.