Shtuyot

We were Shabbos guests at the home of some friends. Their three-year-old was buddies with ours, and it was nice to see them play nicely together. They ran, jumped, and they broke things. The usual.

At some point during the meal, I told my wife a joke. I don’t remember what it was, probably something I knew she wouldn’t find funny, which would be precisely what makes it more funny to me. (By the way, you know how to tell when a joke qualifies as a dad joke? When it becomes apparent…)

She responded with the traditional eye roll, the highest honor. I grinned from ear to ear.

Then, from across the table, we heard our three-year-old explaining to his friend: “My Abba is saying shtuyot (nonsense) to my Mommy.”

Now, it’s not likely he understood the joke itself. But he recognized, with complete confidence, that something ridiculous was happening. My theory is that he knows the tone. He has a whole category for it — “Abba’s nonsense voice” — filed and cross-referenced in the deepest recesses of his soul.

It’s no chiddush that our kids are quietly building a picture of the world from what they observe at home. They know which parent to approach for which request, they read our faces before we say a word, and they file away our stressed voice, our tired voice, our “we’re running late” voice.

When we think about how closely they’re watching, we might react with fear. Imagine a highlight reel of every moment we’d rather they hadn’t seen. The impatience. The stress before bedtime. The things we said and then immediately regretted. We’re all human, but it’s not fun to remember those moments and how our children might remember them also.

But this episode reminded me that they’re not only filing that stuff. They’re also storing the happier stuff in their filing cabinet: the lighter moments, the silly jokes, the smiles. Abba says ridiculous things to Mommy. Mommy rolls her eyes. Abba is delighted with himself anyway. That’s in there, too. If we have enough of those good times going on at home, I have a feeling that our kids will prefer those memories over all others.