Yo Mama

There is always fighting in my house, whether it's a war of words or fists; IT, is always on. Mealtime is no exception. Lately our dinner conversation has been reduced to my kids finding new ways to abuse one another. Shockingly it's not violent, but a complete verbal one-up-man-ship of how much they can kick the other's ass.

"Gregory, I'm going to take a cup of gasoline, dip Mr. Monkey (Greg's favorite snuggly) in it, shake it up, then watch him explode. BOOM!"

To which Gregory responds,"Charrie, I'm going to take lava and throw it in your cup and you will get burned." For some reason Gregory is obsessed with lava these days. He wants to know what will happen if a cat walks through lava, if lava falls on our car, or in your mouth.

Um, it burns, babe.

Mr. I Must Always Have the Last Word says, "Oh yeah? Well Gregory, I can take you in a helicopter and drop you in a volcano and that would burn you way more than just throwing lava on you. Plus lava would totally burn the cup up as soon as it touched it."

"Charrie, the lava is going to burn your butt, too."

"Gregory, I'm going to take gasoline AND diesel mixed together, put it in your glass like it's water then you'll drink it and die! Hahaha."

Any talk of death or killing and I bring a quick end to the banter. Clearly Gregory isn't as adept at the verbal sparring game as his brother, but at least he's playing along. Not too long ago he would have been in tears at the mere mention of Mr. Monkey being harmed.

After listening to the boys go on like this endlessly for a week, I noticed something. The cadence of the exchange smacked of something familiar. I wracked my brain trying to determine what it could be. Literally 2 nights later the movie White Chicks was on TV and the bells sounded off in my head like sirens. I realized my kids were having their own Yo Mama Off, only it was the Marin County preschool boy version.

In the movie, Marcus and Kevin Copeland, played by the Wayans brothers, are cops cleverly undercover as 2 white sisters, hence the title. The White Girls get into a Yo Mama Off with Megan and Heather Vandergeld, your stereotypical rich bitch Hampton society bimbos. After Megan insults the White Chicks' mother for shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue, one of them retorts, "Your mama is so dumb she went to Dr. Dre for a pap smear."

To which Heather Vandergeld scoffs, "Oh yeah, well your mother is so stupid that she exercises when she could just get like, liposuction or something."

As someone whose fanship of the Wayans brothers ended with In Living Color, I must confess that the movie struck me on a couple of levels. First, I found the predictably played out blunders that the brothers experience as they try to pose as women comical. That's right, I laughed when I watched it, a lot. But it also struck a deeper chord. The verbal lashings each side gave to one another in the movie reminded me so much of my kids, each rebuttal getting lamer and more ridiculous, that it made me think - Why couldn't I script a movie using my kids as a foundation? The writing would be significantly better, and the content about equal in quality to White Chicks.

Eureka! I finally found a use for my kids besides as bitter fodder in my undersubscribed blog!

By the way, for those who don't see the humor in the whole 'Yo Mama' genre of jokes, I apologize for the poor representation in this post. They really are hilarious. I hope that the following will restore your faith, peak your interest, or at least make you smile. Or maybe Yo Mama jokes are like the Wayans brothers, you either tolerate them or you hate them. Whatever the case may be, this is one of my favorites.

'Yo mama so fat you have to grease the door frame and hold a twinkie on the other side just to get her through.'