(My father is a musician and practices his flute-playing all the time. It starts to get on my sister’s nerves.)

Sister: “Dad, you’ve been doing that all day! Can you do something else now?”

Father: “But it’s nice flute music!”

Sister: “No, it’s not. It’s always the same. It always goes like this.”

(She sings the same two notes over and over again.)

Father: “I don’t only play that!”

Sister: “No, you’re right. Sometimes it goes like this.”

(She sings the same two notes and then makes one long so the song ends.)

Sister: “Actually, you should play that one more often. Especially the ending, I like that.”

Father: “You mean when it goes quiet?”

Sister: “Exactly.”

(My mom is completely uninterested in sports. One night, at a restaurant, we’re sitting near the bar and she looks up at the football game playing on the TV.)

Mom: “It’s unfortunate that those football players have yellow uniforms. It looks like a girly color.”

Dad: “Honey, those are the Steelers! They’re like, behemoths on the field!”

Mom: “Oh. Well, they look very pretty.”

(I help my mom with the website she uses to sell her artwork. My mom isn’t very computer savvy, so when her domain name expires, she calls me in a panic at 2 am. I blearily set up a 3-way call with the domain company, and about 45 minutes into our extended hold time we have a conversation.)

Mom: “I just don’t understand. They always just charge my card, and they didn’t do it this time.”

Me: “Did your card expire?”

Mom: “No, I don’t even have that card any more. The bank gave me a new one when mine got stolen!”

(I’m with my Aunt, who is 69 and the mother of four children, at my parents’ house. I’m 43, childfree, and recently underwent a hysterectomy. We are working in the kitchen, and we’ve spent the day prepping food for another Aunt’s birthday party. I’ve just made a cheese tray and sealed it inside a big zip-top plastic bag, using a straw to suck all the air out of it first. My Aunt finishes a tray of ham and uses the straw to seal that bag, too.)

Aunt: *laughing* “Ha ha, mine’s tighter than yours!”

Me: “Don’t count on it. You’ve had four kids, and I’ve had mine worked on recently.”

(My mom has just acquired a new Blackberry, and is using it to send me an email. At the bottom of the message is a strange sentence.)

Mom’s email: “Sore for any tips.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

Mom’s email: “I meant to write ‘sorry for any typos’!”