The kids and I have been playing a lot of “If you had a” lately. It’s a game where one person asks “if you had a ___ what would it be?” Everyone answers, preferably with a story, and then we vote on our favorites [there’s more info here]. The only problem is that the boys have gotten into the habit of always voting for me.

It’s not because my stories are the best, but because they don’t want each other to win. If each of them votes for me, neither of them gets two votes.

I’ve been trying to combat this problem by talking up their stories. Tonight, though, I tried a different approach.

“If you had a 20 minute video,” my youngest son asked over dinner. “What would it be?”

My oldest described a pretty funny cartoon. My youngest talked about an adventure with someone surviving in the wild.

“20 minutes?” I said. “Easy. A video of your mom dancing.”

They both looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but we were interrupted by the check arriving (we were at a restaurant), and the game was cut short.

Later, as I was sitting alone with my youngest son by the beach, I asked him who he voted for.

“You,” he said without a pause.

“Really?” I asked. “You want to watch your mom dance for twenty minutes?”

He looked at me blankly, then his cheeks turned pink and he started laughing. “No, No! Not that! I don’t vote for yours. I vote for anything but yours!”

When his older brother joined us, I asked who he voted for.

“You,” he said.

His little brother and I burst out laughing. “Mom dancing?” I said.

“No, no, no! Not that!”