Free Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood by Drew Magary

anything?”
    “Oh, yeah, she got you some underwear.”
    “I DON’T LIKE UNDERWEAR!”
    “Well,
I
thought the underwear was exciting. My mistake. Let’s hop in the bath now.”
    “NO!”
    “Umm . . . please?”
    “NO!”
    Then I had an idea.
    “We could tell jokes,” I said.
    “Jokes?”
    “Mmm-hmm. Remember that joke about the interrupting cow that you li—”
    “MOO!”
    “Yes, that one. You’re very clever. Want to hear more?”
    “Okay!”
    “I’ll tell you more, but only if you shake a tail feather and get in the tub.”
    She stripped down naked and bounded into the warm water. I soaped her up and told her the same tired knock-knock jokes a few times over.
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana
, etc. But the material was wearing thin on her, and I had yet to wash her hair. You can take a child swimming and she won’t complain for a second about getting water on her face. But get water on her face in the tub and she’ll react like you just threw acid into her eyes.
    “I have to wash your hair,” I told her.
    “I don’t wanna wash my hair.”
    “I know you don’t. But all you have to do is look up and the water won’t get in your eyes. I swear this works and you never listen to me.”
    “No.”
    “How about this: Why don’t
you
tell
me
a joke?”
    “Me?”
    “Yeah. Why should I have all the fun? You try one on me.”
    “Okay. Knock knock.”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Hairy.”
    “Hairy who?”
    “Hairy eyeball.”
    Then she laughed so hard that her head naturally tilted upward and I was able to wet her hair without any kind of fuss. I even managed to penetrate the dreaded outside shell of the hair. For some reason, the surface of a child’s hair is virtually waterproof. One time, I poured water on the girl’s hair and it all slid clean off, as if she had dunked her head in Thompson’s WaterSeal. This time, I achieved full saturation down to the scalp.
    “Oh, this is great!” I told her. “Tell another.”
    “Knock knock.”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Hairy.”
    “Hairy who?”
    “Hairy eyeball in your butt.”
    More laughter. I snuck in a quick lather.
    “You tell one, Daddy.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Knock knock.”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Peanut.”
    “Peanut who?”
    “A gallon of rotten peanut butter up your butt.”
    That was the killer. I could feel her laughter reverberating off the bathroom tile and now she was completely distracted. Jokes about butts WORKED. I could have washed her hair a dozen more times and not gotten a rise out of her.
    “More!” she demanded.
    Just like that, I had a meme. I scrambled to find more elaborate things to stick up another person’s butt: toy ponies, a pint of vanilla ice cream, six corncobs, a milk truck. Eventually, I dropped the whole knock-knock formula and segued directly into singing Eddie Murphy’s “Boogie in Your Butt” to her. She went nuts with laughter, throwing her head so far back I thought it might roll off her body. Right on cue, she started inventing her own lyrics.
    “Put some gum in your butt!” she cried out.
    I reacted with phony disgust and that made her laugh even harder.
    “Put some ants in your butt!” I countered.
    “Put a guitar in your butt.”
    “Put an astronaut in your butt.”
    “Put candy in your butt.”
    “Put Germany in your butt.”
    “What’s Germany?”
    “Well, whatever it is, it’s in your butt now.”
    On and on we went. Everything we said was filthy and vile and horrible, but the bath itself was perfectly executed. She didn’t splash water outside the tub once. She didn’t bitch when I put the bath toys away or when I threw out the rubber duck that had black mildew leaking out of it. And when I opened the tub drain without her looking, she didn’t immediately close it back up so that she could hang around in the bath for another eight hours, the way she usually did. The last of the bathwater swirled down the drain and she stepped out to receive her toweling like a