WARNING: Snark Free Zone

What did you give up for Lent? I gave up sarcasm, and it wasn’t easy. Ask my daughter

- Laura Boggs

Dolphins. that’s how i got into trouble. It was the week before Lent. My husband, three teen age daughters and I were eating dinner at the kitchen table when I brought it up. Something I’d seen on Facebook that afternoon. An acquaintance from church had a penchant for posting overly inspirational quotes accompanied by photos of rainbows, sunsets, ice-cream-cone-shaped clouds, you name it.

“Now she’s moved on to dolphins,” I told my family. “I wonder if killer whales are next.”

I dropped the word cheesy. Everyone laughed. Everyone, that is, except my 17-year-old daughter, Maggie. She just stared at her plate and moved her peas from one side to the other.

After dinner, I went upstairs to check on her. Maggie was sitting on her bed, earbuds in. I tried to get her to open up about what was bothering her. But she gave me the teenage cold shoulder. I thought I was going to get frostbite.

“I don’t want to talk,” Maggie finally said, pulling out her earbuds. “You’ll just say I’m being cheesy.”

“What?” I said. I was sarcastic, sure, but I’d never call my kids cheesy!

“You’re snarky, Mom. You make fun of everything,” Maggie said. “And FYI,

I like those dolphin photos!”

Dolphins? This was about dolphins? Seriously?

All night I tossed and turned, thinking about what Maggie had said. Was she right? Was I too snarky? I wasn’t a mean person. But around people I was comfortable with, I did tend to poke fun at things. It’s just how I’d been raised. In my family growing up, humor was everything. When I was little, my dad and brother would spend the entire dinner hour outdoing each other’s jokes. I had to keep up if I wanted to be included. And I was the kind of person who noticed everything.