The youngest and I went for lunch at a local Indian restaurant a while back. Really, we went because Tom Holland and Zendaya had been spotted there earlier that week and we were hoping maybe they would come back for more. They didn’t but, regardless, we still enjoyed our tasty meal.

At the end, we had quite a bit of food leftover and I said to her, “I guess we’ll need a doggy bag.” She looked at me with that deprecating look only a teenager (or David Rose) can give and said “A what?!” “A doggy bag, you know, like a to-go bag. Or” I remembered a word she might know, “takeaway.” “Who says that?! Nobody says that! It doesn’t even make sense,” she said with only an ounce of condescension. This then turned into a learning lesson for her because A. She didn’t remember ever hearing that particular idiom so she learned a new word and, B. She received a brief lesson as to where the term came from (in a nutshell, to avoid food waste during WWII, Americans would ask for the leftovers to take home to the family dog).

I understand why she would be confused by such the saying. We left the US when she was nine and far less aware of her surroundings. Plus, as a family we’ve all assimilated to saying “takeaway.” To be honest, she wasn’t wrong to argue that it didn’t make sense considering I had zero plans to feed the dog leftover Indian curry. “Since it’s daddy who usually eats the leftovers, what if we called it a ‘daddy bag’?” I proposed, knowing full well it was a weird thing to say and very cringe.

The fear in her eyes was real as the waiter approached our table and I began to ask my question…

Obviously, I didn’t ask for a “daddy bag” (or a “doggy bag” for that matter) but watching her sweat was absolutely worth it.