comic timing is everything

we've got these neighbors. think of your worst non-violent nightmare kind of people. white trash, ignorant, filthy, loud, clueless, smoke-through-a-pregnancy, park-on-your-garbage-strewn-lawn types and i swear they're reproducing almost as fast as gremlins. a total cliche. this is the family of Special Powers, of Mud Huggies, of four other children, five barely literate adults and five pit bulls. jealous? thought so. but our whole family loves those filthy neighbor kids, so we bite our tongues and tolerate the adults. our kids, especially The Dude, love playing with them, and because they are always outside and unsupervised, the neighbor kids are always available playmates. lots of them. lots and lots of them.

yesterday, The Unicorn engaged in a conversation with one of the neighbor's guests. he stared intently at the unsightly smeared dirt and chunky-chocolaty-paste covered face of the tiny child as the kid went on and on for the longest time explaining what sort of day he'd had, how many eggs he'd found in the egg hunt, and what game the kids were playing at the moment. The Unicorn appeared to be listening intently, but at the end of the urchin's little-voiced rant, The Unicorn paused for about a half a second and then he yelled excitedly into the Dirt Boy's face, jumping up and down and pumping his arms in time to emphasize each syllable, "WOW! your face is really dirty!" proving that he hadn't actually heard a single word of Dirt Boy's monologue. and then he walked away. like, i'm sorry, kid. i didn't hear anything you said because i was too busy trying to figure out what the fuck is caked all over your face, little man. peace!