When Are We Too Tired To Win For Losing?

I lost another battle to Ali but now she is five so it's not quite so embarrassing as it was when she was four. We were waiting for Princesses on Ice to begin and the guy selling Kettle Korn was coming by yelling for sales.  "Kettle Korn", he'd blare out.

Not quite feeling my usual jolly self, still feeling remnants of the pig flu, I mindlessly echoed, "Kettle Korn."

"Chedder Corn", Ali corrected me.

"Kettle Korn", I said politely.  "It's 'Kettle Korn'"  I repeated without much will to live let alone a will to explain that I knew this because I could read the packaging and wasn't simply parroting what the idiot yelling in our ears was saying.

"Chedder Corn", she said again calmly as if she were explaining to an idiot she had been assigned to, with the added admonition to "not let things get out of hand."

I wanted to wrestle her to the ground, place my foot on her throat and tell her I could read and I knew without a doubt it was "Kettle Korn", but I was too tired.  And I do love her.  And I don't want to be arrested.  And I do want to see Princesses on Ice.    And I think  that she thinks that she can read because she's in Miss Karen's PreSchool and can recite stuff precisely because she's heard it so many times and can recognize "sight" words and thinks that we're all just faking it when we say we can read.  Who knows?

Maybe we are?  I'm too tired to argue the point.   Ali always seems to win anyway.  No one seems any the wiser.  Carl hands me a Diet Coke.  I guess I am pacified.  Ali doesn't seem to think I'm any stupider than she did before so I guess my secret is safe.  Whew.  I live to fight another day.