Ruby drops the Funky Robot. I retreat.

Ruby and I went on a little shopping excursion this past weekend. On the ride over, I threatened her repeatedly with The Claw, a technique by which I tickle her by forming the digits of one hand into a claw-like rictus, then poking her in the stomach with it. It doesn’t work all that well. Mostly it just annoys her. Which is fine for me. I’ll take what I can get.

“Blah, blah, blah…The Claw…blah, blah, blah.”

“Dad…DAD! DAAAAD!!!!!”

“What?”

“You aren’t… cool.”

“What d’yer mean I’m not cool? I’m the coolest! I READ COMIC BOOKS.” (Pathetic and Dad-like, I know.)

“No, you aren’t cool. You don’t listen to cool music. And you act all crazy. NOT. COOL.”

“How can you say I’m cool…??”

“You’ve got to act more like a boy, you know. You got to hang out and dance and stuff.”

“But I dance. I can dance like monkey!”

“No, no. You got to do The Funky Robot. Watch.”

By this time we were parked. I watched in stunned silence as my five year old daughter does a torso-centric version of the goddamn Funky Robot strapped into her car seat. Two hours previous we had a lengthy chat about the relative merits of dinosaurs versus dragons, now she was busting it like she was a member of Cameo.

Holy fucking shit. She dropped the Bomb on me, from the motherfucking CAR SEAT.