I don’t remember this myself, but Mom used to tell me about it. It happened when my younger brother was a toddler, about thirty years ago.

For some reason, he was crying and Mom tried to comfort him by offering a biscuit but he refused to take it. Meanwhile, my older brother and I tried to sing lullabies to help. It didn’t work.

I can only imagine all the noise that must have caused, and it alarmed — and possibly annoyed — our fifth family member, our cat. She was like an extra mom to my younger brother and me. For example, she would carefully lie down above my head when Mom went out with me in a baby stroller, as if to keep me warm and safe.

Without Mom noticing it, the cat came into the room, jumped up in the crib, and carefully took a small bite of the biscuit. For some reason, that made my brother stop crying, as he then snatched it away, almost like “That’s mine!” In that moment, the cat calmly left the room, her mission completed.

(My little sister has a sleepover birthday party. We use an Echo Dot to play music for the party. It’s quite early the morning after and all of them stayed up until four in the morning before finally the last one passed out.)

Mom: “Can you go down to the basement and wake them all up for breakfast, please?”

Me: “Oh, sure.”

(I walk downstairs where all of them except for one are still asleep and I walk over to the Echo Dot still sitting on the table. The volume is still up quite loud from last night.)

Me: “Alexa, play ‘Diamonds Aren’t Forever’ by Bring Me the Horizon.”

Alexa: “Got it! Playing ‘Diamonds Aren’t Forever’ by Bring Me the Horizon.”

(I got yelled at by my mom, but it admittedly woke them all up pretty fast.)

Last century, my grandad was one of the first people to have a tracheotomy for throat cancer and survive. With it came speech therapy and an alternative way to speak, based on a technique of burping. He was ashamed to do his exercise but quickly found a way around it.

He was taking long walks with his then youngest grandchild, my brother, all the while practicing his speech. Nobody thought it strange as people make all sorts of sounds to babies. As my brother was between six months and a year old, he was at his most receptive for language development and was quick to pick up what my granddad was doing.

One night, in his crib, he was imitating the sounds my granddad made, sounding as if he was choking, scaring my mum and making her rush to him. It took a while before she made the connection and understood what the baby was doing.

And that is the story of how my brother learned to speak at an early age and how, to this day, he can belch upon request.

(My name, while common, uses one of the more uncommon spellings — for my area at least. For sake of ease, let’s say it’s Kathryn instead of Catherine. They did the same with my middle name. My dad has decided to write me a check while we’re sitting in the bank parking lot. He pauses partway through writing the check, looking at me somewhat ashamed.)

Dad: “How did we spell your name again?”

Me: *jokingly* “You had twenty years to learn this, Dad. K-A-T-H-R-Y-N.”

Dad: *laughing along as he finishes out the check* “Good thing I don’t have to put your middle name on here; I’d get that wrong, too!”

(Thanks, guys.)

(When my brother is little, we call him Grins because he always has a huge one on. All the time! One day, we go to the pool and get in. He doesn’t know how to swim yet so I am tasked with carting him around the pool.)

Me: “Now, Grins, make sure you don’t grin because the water will go into your mouth and make you choke! Lips closed!”

Brother: “What, I can’t be happy?”

Me: “You can, but… just smile with your mouth closed! Okay?”

(He didn’t and started sputtering. After a while, he decided to go down the water slide without telling anyone… with a big fat grin on, of course! I swam up to him and caught him before he drowned. And yes, he did eventually learn to swim, but he didn’t like swimming anymore. I still don’t know why he just couldn’t keep his mouth closed.)