NO! = YES!

Much like Felix the Cat, Miss Dub has a bag o' trick these days. Her latest and cutest is to shake her head side to side, indicating NO! Or so I thought. Then I started to ask her questions that clearly registered a positive response - like, "Do you want to eat sugared foods that babies should never have?" - only to have her shake her head side to side, indicating NO! Except, she meant YES! So while it's an adorable trick, it's also a confusing one. Because NO! and YES! have distinctly different meanings in most cases. Like, NO! I don't want to eat ice cream with ranch on top ever again. Or, YES! I do think it's normal to wish you lived underwater.

But the more I watch Miss Dub shake her head side to side, the more I realize that NO! and YES! can sometimes mean the same thing. So I've recently found myself shaking my own head in the negative to indicate something positive ... or positively negative. Confused? Me, too, and that's half the fun.

I found myself shaking my head while talking to Jet Blue customer service yesterday. While trying to book travel to Cali, the website froze up and when it miraculously worked again all fares were $20 more each way. But apparently prices are subject to change, literally, until your credit card is charged. So I shook my head NO! because that didn't seem fair. How could you be guaranteed one price but charged another? And NO! I didn't want to pay an extra $80 just because they had some "computer glitch." But YES! I did understand they had a legal right to do it. And YES! I would still pay it because an extra $80 to see my family and live at the beach for two weeks is worth it.

Having learned my lesson, I promptly searched for fares for our holiday trip to Utah. When, holy moly, I discovered that the cheapest ones were $340 a piece! FIVE months in advance! (Note the exclamation marks!!) And so the shaking started. Because NO! I don't want to pay $700 for the three of us to fly to Utah to celebrate a holiday that costs a lot of money already! And because NO! I don't want to think about how other members of the family will be driving there or walking down the street, which is, like, the free-est type of transportation out there. But I was also shaking my head because YES! we will pay it. Because YES! even though we aren't rich we will pay whatever it costs to spend Christmas with family. And YES! I know that means we're financially reckless, but I'd rather eat ramen then eat Christmas dinner in front of the TV.

So we decided to cool off at the pool, where we were greeted by a strange man who was performing elaborate diving moves into the deep end. Something like an eight-year-old would do off the high dive at a public pool. Except there was no diving board, he wasn't eight, and he was very, very creepy. So I shook my head NO! because it was wrong for a grown man to be performing intricate spiral twists and practicing for an imaginary dive meet. But I also meant YES! because who doesn't love a little freaky behavior? Because YES! it was sweet to see him get all nervous before performing a stunt he clearly wanted us to watch.

Which reminds me of a time when we were driving home from a Cubs' game along a major expressway when we saw a gang of motorbikers. They started to slow down, thus forcing all traffic around them to slow down, which made me confused until I saw one biker suddenly rev up his engine and proceed to pop a wheelie. Going 60 MPH. On an expressway. And I couldn't stop shaking my head NO! NO! NO! because it was the dumbest, most dangerous, scary thing I've ever seen. Because NO! I did not want to see his head smashed across the road when he crashed. But I also meant YES! because it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. And because YES! he didn't crash or die.

So there you have it. Another reason why my baby is the smartest child ever.

And NO! I'm not exaggerating. (YES! I probably am. A little.)