Chloe asked me to draw letters on her back before bed last night.

 
We go through the usual, “C-H-L-O-E” and then get trickier, “B-R-A-D-P-I-T-T” and then sometimes I stump her with a lower case “j” and so on and so on.

 
Then Chloe takes a turn with me and draws as I assume, the way she writes, with reckless abandon, missing the page that is my back entirely and leaving me hoping to guess correctly for her sake but essentially pulling random guesses out of thin air with a 1 in 26 shot at being accurate.

 
Sometimes she draws an “A” but drags her other hand across my back like a chalkboard eraser so she can straighten out the invisible line. This causes some anxiety on my part because she starts drawing an “A” but ends with the whole airplane.

 
Last night the frustration started after I guessed “O” even though it was far too boxy to be round.

 
She drew the “letter” again and I guessed “W”—strike two.

 
Third time’s a charm? Is it a “V”? Nope.

 
She drew the mystery letter one last time, erasing on occasion to make every stroke perfect and then awaited my response.

 
“Chloe, is it the letter ‘Z’?”

 
Slamming her pink fuzzy on the ground in frustration, “MOM, IT’S A TOOTH!!!!”

 
Then I wrote, “D-U-H” on her back.