Anyway, this time she says “A bird jumped in my chips.” OK. So there’s a horde of begging pigeon bums at the pool who will waddle up on you and snatch your chips if you’re not careful. You gotta guard your chips. But if a thieving pigeon bum does manage to snatch a chip or two, it’s not the end of the world. There’s more chips in the bag. In fact, it’s a good thing to help bums. Finslippy’s kid gives bums money. I’m just trying to find a bright side, you know? Lots of parenting is about trying to find the sunshine in big piles of shit. Or in this case, when birds steal your chips.
But she was right. This time, it wasn’t just a freeloading pigeon stealing her chips. When I investigated, there was indeed a bird in her chips. It was tiny. It was dead. I’m going to restate this for you in italics after a line break for emphasis because this kind of crazy shit only happens to me and my family.
A fucking bird committed suicide in my daughter’s potato chips.
I’d be pissed too. It was gross. I looked up in the tree and found a nest full of tweeting baby birds. What the fuck happened? What would make such a young bird with such a promising future leap to her own death like that? Or wait. Maybe her siblings pushed her out of the nest. Can you imagine? A bunch of murderous baby birds conspiring to shove her into my daughter’s potato chips to make it look like an accident. Fucking devious little birds. Look at them tweeting and shit like nothing even happened. One of your own is dead you chirpy bastards!
Jump cut. There’s no moral. What would you make of it? My life’s crazy.
Later that afternoon, Lucy shoves a bunch of red Nerds up her nose. Plugs it good. She can’t breathe, you know? I’m thinking ER, but Jenna grabs a pair of tweezers and begins to pluck red Nerds out of our little kid’s nose. She’s being very calm and supportive while Lucy screams and I’m just crazy irrational: “WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!? WHY IS YOUR NOSE PLUGGED UP WITH CANDY?!?”
But she doesn’t know. I don’t know either. Who could ever know? I begin to wonder if stuffing your nose full of red candy might in some way serve to alleviate the trauma of seeing a bird commit suicide in your potato chips. It’s counterintuitive—I know—but so much of psychology is. But really. Who knows why kids do anything? There’s no shit like this in the parenting manuals. No “Witnessed Bird Suicide” in the index or what to do about it. Why do any of us do what we do? Why would we stuff red Nerds up our nose? Why would we leap to our own death? Why do we sometimes wake up angry? Fuck. Why were we even born at all? We don’t know. We can’t ever know.
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