momdar

Mommies have special hearing. They can detect the slightest whimper or muffled cry of a child from great distances.This is known as "Momdar." Daddies have a version of Momdar called "Dadar", but it's often muffled, muted, or just turned off. Of course, as any good Daddy will tell you, so long as Mommy is nearby (and has her Momdar on - as she always does), his Dadar is superfluous.

Yesterday, Overboard went into the laundry room and requested me to make sure the baby monitor was on while Kenny took his nap. I noted to her that the monitor was indeed on, but she didn't hear me, since she was in the laundry room and I was in the basement on the couch (a whole doorway away). She asked again, in a slightly angrier tone, and I snapped back that I had told her that it was on, and figured she could tell because the boy had yelled something only moments before. I then questioned her Momdar.

Overboard took offense to just about everything in the previous paragraph, and said that her Momdar worked just fine, thankyouverymuch. The exchange then went something like this:

EVENKEEL: I thought you could hear through solid walls, and up to several rooms away.

OVERBOARD: I can.

EVENKEEL: Then, why do you need the monitor on at all?

OVERBOARD: 'Cause I don't want to get confused when I hear the kid four houses away.

I conceded the point.