One of the long-running jokes between J and I is that she used to do a killer imitation of Betty Boop (boop-boop-be-doop!). She doesn’t do it any more, but we still chuckle about it.

Yesterday, all four of us were wandering around a mall when we passed by one of those “we sell all sorts of stuff” stores. You know the kind. They have bizarre statues in the display window, paintings with little LEDs in them, and usually some wooden giraffes.

The boys were fascinated. They dragged us in.

The first thing we saw was a two foot statue of Betty Boop. I pointed it out to the boys. “Who does that look like?”

J groaned, but they still didn’t catch it. I added a prompt “Maybe like momma?”

“Hey!”
“Yeah!”
“That does look like momma!”

We continued into the store. Five minutes later, C (the five year old) stopped in front of a two foot statue of Bachhus. For those not up on their Greek mythology, that’s the greek god of wine. In this case, he was a fat old bald man in a toga, smiling from ear to ear, and wearing a wreath of grapes on his head.

C stopped us. “Hey! Look! That looks like momma!”

Huh?

“Well, except for the fruit on his head.” He paused and looked at his momma. “And the smile. The smile doesn’t look like momma.”

Well, that was true. Momma certainly wasn’t smiling.

For those who are wondering, she also wasn’t wearing a toga. Nor was she bald, or fat, or a man, or pasty white. She wasn’t even wearing sandals. She is, however, Greek. So maybe that’s what he meant.