Who's the Boss?

I remember it as if it were yesterday. Or more like it was a couple weeks back, which it almost surely was. The question took me by surprise, out of the blue.

"Daddie, who's the boss?"

I look around sheepishly. This is a trick question, depending on whether the Mommie is around and I know it.

Shoot. I can't see the Mommie anywhere, but we have a pretty open floor plan, so I hazard a guess.

"Mommie is the boss, right?"

"No. Try again."

"Uh, ok. Well, how about Daddie's the boss? That sounds cool, right?"

"Nope! Try again."

"Um, is it Tony Danza? Because if it is, you and I need to talk." I kind of spaced out wondering whether Tony Danza was the boss on that show. Or was it Angela? Or Mona?

He turns the bottle of barbecue sauce in front of him around triumphantly. What I read on the neck of the bottle is what he says with a flourish.

"The sauce is the boss!"

Oh. Of course. Sure enough, right there on the bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's (the only BBBQ sauce we'll buy), that's what it says. So for a long stretch there, he stopped calling it barbecue sauce, and just referred to it as the boss.

Last night, I was giving the kids dinner, and Random demanded to have barbecue sauce like her brother. Now, she's had it before, but it's not a frequent occurrence. I gave her a little squirt of it to dip her pizza in (like big brother). She ate it all up, and she started saying "Mo. Mo. Mo. Peezh!"

"Random, what do you want more of?"

Emphatically, she stabbed a finger downward toward the place where the sauce had been and said "Boss!" clear as day.

I didn't even know she'd been paying attention.

That was all well and good, but she didn't know her brother has moved on to calling it "50% more free!" (what it says on the neck of the latest bottle...)