Riddle me this

Seconda rad a library book this week featuring a stinky giant who tells a bunch of riddles. This has got her really into telling riddles, most of which she makes up and which are not riddles, in the typical sense. Or any sense, actually. They are not even jokes, in point of fact. They are more like lines of dialogue from a Richard Foreman play. I quite enjoy them.

Primo, on the other hand, knows real riddles, being almost 8 and all. So a few days ago, he asked Sec to riddle him this:

"What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?"

Because of course, that Primo, my inimitable boy, knows the riddle of the Sphinx.

Seconda considered a moment, obviously churning the gears in her mind. Four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, three in the evening? The answer was clear.

"A BARRACUDA!!!!!" she squealed. She said it with confidence and triumph, in her inimitable way, fully assured it was the only answer one could come up with.

All of us laughed, even the baby, and Seconda too.

"That exchange right there," I told David, "That about says it all. That just typifies who each of them are. And why I love each of them so goddamned much."

He couldn't help but agree.