It's Not Easy...

We had an almost entire family dinner Saturday night and somehow we got to telling ridiculous stories from when we were younger. Priceless.

When my oldest brother was an adolescent, he was totally into the grunge, all-black, shave-half-his hair-and-dye-the-other-half-an-unnatural-color scene. Now, for each of our birthdays, my mother had created a tradition of baking a cake and decorating it as we requested - teddy bears, flowers, Bart Simpson, etc. etc. One year on Bobo's birthday, Mom asked him what he wanted. He shrugged his shoulders and mumbled that he didn't care - she could color it black if she wanted.

So she baked the cake, bought a bottle of black food coloring, and whipped up some delicious lemon buttercream frosting. She added the food coloring and mixed it up to get a nice rich emerald color:

Apparently the acidity of the fresh lemon interfered with the food coloring. So she added some more pigment. And some more. And some more. She ended up adding the entire bottle and it didn't turn out much darker than a hunter green:

"Oh well," she thought to herself. "This will have to suffice." So we had the birthday dinner, put on the ridiculous cone-shaped hats, lit candles, and sang "happy birthday to you." At this point everyone descended upon the cake like the foul sugar-loving beasties that we were.

It was delicious of course, and at some point somebody cracked a funny joke that made everyone laugh, revealing mouths full of disgusting green troll teeth. Tiny three-year-old E's mouth: green. Mom's mouth: green. Even Baby P's toothless mouth had a sickly greenish hue. To our child minds it was so hilarious. Little did we know the green did not stop there.

The next morning I got ready for school, made sure my hair scrunchie matched my stretch pants, brushed my teeth, went to the bathroom. Something was not right. I came downstairs, concerned "Mom, I just went to the bathroom..."

"Everything came out green?" she asked. "It happened to me and your father. And I just changed P's diaper... also green."

Not a single soul was spared.

And a few valuable life lessons were learned. Green teeth are funny. Green doody is funnier. Green pee is funniest!