Disclaimer: In order to understand this post, you’ll need to know the following: I call my niece Nixie. She calls me Keeka. She calls Scarlette “Beans”. Actually, we all call Scarlette “Beans” but that’s another story for another day.
My sister and I share the same completely absurd sense of humor. You know how something innocuous can spin out of control and turn into something absolutely ridiculous? And also awesome? That’s what happened when I finally crawled out of the dark ages and got a smart phone. I don’t have cable but I can send text message pictures and that has opened up a whole new world (a dazzling place I never knew…)
Specifically, one where my sister and I try to out do each other by texting the craziest pictures we can find on the interwebs. It didn’t start out that way. We started off exchanging cute and funny pictures of our nieces. Totally innocent and sweet.
Then one day I made a glass of what my niece calls “Pink Milk” which is milk loaded up with strawberry Hershey’s syrup. Don’t judge me. And I thought it would be funny to send a picture of it to my sister. So I did. I sent her a picture of my drink with the label “Keeka’s Pink Milk.”
That sounds like the world’s lamest text message. But not if you’re my sister. Because she sent back a photo of my niece playing in a bathtub filled with purple water titled “Nixie’s Purple Bath.”
Seven hundred and forty three text messages later, we’re sending each other texts of the most ridiculous photos we can find on the internet. Except that isn’t enough for us, oh no. My sister sends me a video of a monkey riding on a pig. I happen to be purging everything I’ve ever owned in my entire life, which is why at the exact moment I received it I was holding a paper mache pig that I made in fourth grade. Seriously. This is why I fail at not being a hoarder. And that’s when I thought it would be even funnier to send her a picture of Scarlette’s stuffed monkey sitting on my paper mache pig.
Which resulted in a picture text message war spin off in which I take the unspoken challenge to re-create whatever absurd photo she sends me with objects found around my house. This is not discussed between us, simply understood. It’s a twin thing. I mean, we’re not twins but that’s what it would be if we were. What followed was this:
I was pretty impressed with myself but my sister took points off for the lack of flames in my version. To which I responded that I thought about using a candle but decided against endangering my child by allowing her to play near open flame. And my sister agreed that yes, we don’t want to set Beans on fire, accompanied by the following text message:
That’s right. I did what any loving mother would do when getting involved in a land war in Asia deeply over-invested in a text message picture battle with her sister. I cut out a hand-drawn flame and strapped to my child’s forehead. Flaming Beans. I win.
The worst part about it is I promptly forgot that I had done that and Scarlette continued happily playing her piano with a giant flame shooting off the top of her head for at least another twenty minutes.
I realize that this is only funny to people who are my sister, which is pretty much just the one person but I want to immortalize this exchange for when I print out this year’s blog book. Also, I’m very productive and not at all wasteful with my time. Just look at that highly organized closet.
P.S. These pictures are going to look A-MAZING in my project life album. Word to your mother.
