Karma

One of the privileges of unclehood is the opportunity to corrupt young minds. Early and often. This is sometimes achieved intentionally. For instance, due to my direct intervention, my almost-four-year-old niece now believes that the correct answer to

Why did the chicken cross the road?

is actually

To die in the rain. Alone.

Sometimes such lessons are inadvertent. After hearing me use a particular word only once, this same niece apparently squirreled it away in her own personal lexicon, only to pull it out a week later when she told her mother:

Princess Jasmine dresses like a floozy!

But fate, it seems, will have her revenge, forcing me to say things that take me by surprise, as though the words were not my own. Just a few days ago, I found myself instructing my young charges:

Don't feed the Baby Jesus to the giant robotic hamster. At least not so close to his birthday.