Daddy, how much money did you make today?

When I was a kid, first thing I said to my Mom when she returned home from work was "you got the newspaper?" I was a New York Post junkie. Little kid like me didn't know it was a fishwrap tabloid, just that it had a pretty good sports section. My mom would always get the Final Edition too so it had all the late boxscores from the West Coast, plus partial boxscores of today's afternoon games. That was cool.

Before my Mom handed the paper over to me, she'd always give me the "is that how you greet me?" treatment. "No 'Hi Mom! I love you, Mom! How was your day, Mom?'????"

Many years later, I started getting the same treatment from my wife. Every evening, she would ask, "How much money did you make today?" No "Hi honey, how was your day? What do you want for dinner?"

Then when she found out what time the markets closed in the afternoon, she'd call me up from her office to ask. It got pretty aggravating as you can imagine. I got her to change the question to "how many ticks did you make today?" That was a bit less stressful for a couple weeks. Then finally I got her to just ask my how my week went at Friday's close. And that's the game we are currently playing. So now I only have to lie once a week.

My baby is starting some hardcore babbling now. He's stringing syllables like they're going out of style, and adding intonation and everything. It's only a matter of time before he starts asking how much money I made today.