Is Sarcasm a Heritable Trait?

So today, after a spirited Mexican party in honour of friends who are moving to Australia (not to be confused with an Australian party in honour of friends who are moving to Mexico, except I did keep confusing it, and wondering if I should buy them sombreros as farewell gifts or look up recipes for kangaroo meat, but that's a different post) I was wandering around sweeping up corn chips and popcorn and nerf darts (and the kids were really messy too) and throwing out empty margarita-mix containers. I went into the laundry room to put something in the freezer and there was a clean load of clothes in the dryer but no basket. So I gathered the clothes in my arms and went upstairs. I looked into the family room, where Eve was on the floor in her mermaid nightgown, playing with her barbies and her little barbie swimming pool. She looked around and saw me and got up, making little "I'm stiff from sitting for so long" noises. I didn't know what she was doing, but I was afraid I was going to start dropping socks and dish cloths, so I turned to go up to the next floor...
"Give me a hug I said!" she bellowed.
"No you didn't" I said (quite reasonably, I thought). And she said...
"Well what did you think?! I was running after you to shake your hand?"

Comments

Anonymous said…
Oh, dear, doesn't she know that any reasonable parent gives up questioning a child's motives by the time they're like 3? You can only be burned so many times guessing at what a little person wants before you stop altogether. There's no telling what she was coming after you for. No telling at all. ;)
September 6, 2009 at 8:43 PM
Anonymous said…
that's fantastic
September 8, 2009 at 8:06 PM
alison said…
Bwahahaha! It reminds me of when Rachel was about 4 and had asked for pretzels while watching tv. The bag was open on the kitchen counter, so I quite reasonably told her she could get some for herself. She looked at me indignantly and said, "Do I have wings? Can I fly? Now get me some pretzels!" Sarcasm rears its ugly head early in our family.
September 11, 2009 at 6:38 AM
The Library Lady said…
I'm not sure at what point my older girl started saying "That's sarcasm, isn't it? I can RECOGNIZE sarcasm", but at 14 she sure has it down pat.

Sarcasm is built into Ashkenazi Jews. I got a fine dose from my dad and it's been passed down in full to my daughters :D
September 13, 2009 at 5:20 PM
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