My niece and I just started a podcast.
It is called Cheryl and Janice. It takes place exclusively in the mirror. Neither of us has any qualifications whatsoever, and apparently our primary area of expertise is potato-family drama.
Janice comes from the Tater Tot family.
Yes. Those Tater Tots.
They are members of the larger potato family, obviously, but—as with any prominent family—there are branches. There are alliances. There are grudges. There are Russets. There are feuds.
And there is Cousin Spud.
We were discussing Janice’s upcoming wedding to her fiancé—Gerald or something; honestly, the details were moving quickly—when I casually mentioned that I would be bringing Cousin Spud.
Immediately:
“Oh NO. Not Spud.”
Excuse me?
Apparently, Janice and Spud DO NOT get along anymore.
Well, obviously Cheryl needed the story.
So, naturally, we had to go into the entire history of the Tater Tot family, their falling-out with Spud, the other potato families, the Russets, the marriages, the scandals, the grudges, and whatever other completely fabricated potato trauma we could come up with.
And we did the entire thing in the most aggressive English-Irish-whatever-we-decided-it-was accent imaginable.
We were CACKLING.
Not cute little giggles.
Cackling.
Screaming.
Singing.
Interrupting each other.
Basically two best friends hosting the most unhinged podcast Britain has never asked for.
Eventually, we walked out into the living room, still completely delighted with ourselves, and my mom looked at us and said:
“I officially have a headache.”
She told us we were insane. She said all she could hear was screaming.
My niece immediately corrected her.
“We were SINGING.”
My mom was like, “Whatever y’all were doing, it was LOUD.”
“It was a podcast,” we explained.
Apparently that did not improve our case.
And I looked at my niece and said, “See? Here Buddy goes stifling dreams. This is why it took me so long to come out of my shell.”
We lost it again.
And underneath all the silliness, something about the whole thing felt incredibly healing.
Because I got to be completely ridiculous with a kid I love.
No correcting her imagination.
No telling her to tone it down.
No worrying whether what we were doing made sense.
We were just creating.
I had gone over there with some sweets and brought her coffee cake because she LOVES coffee cake. You would have thought I had arrived carrying the crown jewels.
And I love that about kids.
The little things aren’t little to them.
A piece of coffee cake can say, I thought about you.
Sitting on the floor and inventing a potato dynasty can say, I like being with you.
Playing along with their ridiculous characters can say, Your imagination matters to me.
And being willing to get loud, weird, and completely unserious with them can say, You are safe to be exactly who you are with me.
Those are little trinkets of love.
And kids feel them.
You can actually watch them feel special. You can see their shoulders loosen and their personalities get bigger. They come out of their shells because nobody is asking them to perform being anything other than exactly who they are.
And maybe that’s why it felt healing for me, too.
Because when you give a child permission to be wildly themselves, sometimes you accidentally give that permission back to yourself.
For a little while, nobody had to be grown up.
Nobody had to be productive.
Nobody had to make sense.
We just had to figure out what the hell happened between Janice and Cousin Spud.
And apparently that was enough.
I walked away smiling ear to ear.
I love my niece. I love these kids. I love my family. And I feel so blessed that I get these little pockets of time where I can enter their world instead of always asking them to enter mine.
We can make theater.
We can make art.
We can make characters.
We can make podcasts nobody asked for.
We can make an entire generational feud out of a bag of potatoes.
Because childhood doesn’t always need to be taught.
Sometimes it just needs somebody willing to play along.
And for the record:
Cousin Spud is still coming to the wedding.
Janice can take it up with Cheryl.
