My sibling is genderfluid — they alternate between identifying as male and female — and visits occasionally. This time, my son decided to ask me why his uncle/aunt changes gender every time we see them, so I tell him “they’re genderfluid.”

Later, when I looked at my grocery list before I went out, I saw that my son had added “gender fluid” to the list. Upon questioning why he wrote this down, I learned that he’d thought gender fluid was an actual liquid — like windshield fluid — and if you run out you get stuck as the opposite gender forever. He thought my sibling kept switching from male to female because theirs was running low, and wanted to help out.

Of course, I immediately explained what it really meant more thoroughly.

This story is my dad’s from when he was about twelve years old. He and his three siblings were home alone on a winter day while their parents were running errands. The four kids decided to have a snowball fight, with a few twists: it was a three-on-one fight, with the three older siblings taking on the youngest brother. To “make it more fair,” the three older siblings would stick to throwing snowballs, while the youngest brother got to shoot at them with an old BB gun. The gun was not powerful at all — according to my dad, you could almost see the BB coming toward you because the gun was so weak — so they thought they would be okay with their heavy winter coats and snow pants, as long as their brother didn’t aim at their heads.

About ten minutes into the snowball vs BB gun fight, my dad popped out from behind a tree and threw a snowball at his younger brother. His brother shot at him, aiming at my dad’s chest to avoid breaking the rule against headshots. The only problem was that my dad ducked.

According to my dad, when the BB hit one of his teeth, it made a sound kind of like a loud bell echoing inside his head. My dad’s tooth broke in half, and the kids naturally called the fight off and went inside to take care of it. When their parents got home and saw my dad’s broken tooth, all the kids lied and said my dad had slipped on the icy driveway and broke his tooth when he fell. Somehow, the parents believed their kids, and rushed my dad to the dentist with no further questions asked.

My grandparents didn’t find out the truth about what happened until almost thirty years later, when my mom casually mentioned the story to my dad’s parents, not knowing that his parents had never heard the true story about my dad’s broken tooth.

(I am about five years old, my brother around eight. It is a weekend. We have woken up before our parents and want to be up before they do. We also want pancakes. We’ve been sticking our heads out our door and calling down the hall to ask them if they’re going to get up. I can’t remember the first part of the conversation went, but I remember this part clearly.)

Brother: “Could you make us pancakes?”

Dad: “Maybe later.”

Me: “Do you mind if I make pancakes?”

Dad: “No.”

(I turn away from the door and start to pout.)

Brother: “What are you sad about?”

Me: “He said no!”

Brother: “But that means yes!”

(He then explains how “do you mind” and “no” mean “I don’t mind.”)

Me: “But… I don’t know how to make pancakes!”

(Somehow I had conveniently forgotten that fact when I asked if I could make them myself. To the best of my memory, that morning ended with me on a stool beside my mom trying to make “the biggest pancake ever” and asking her to make the batter fill the entire pan.)

When my brother was a toddler, he never seemed to stop eating, and once his teeth grew in he would eat pretty much anything and everything he had access to. This led to some pretty funny moments.

Moment #1: While eating a packet of crisps, my brother fell asleep. The rule in my family, even at that age, was that if you left your snacks unattended, family members were allowed to take some. On this occasion, he fell asleep with one hand in the bag, and the other clamped tight around the top of the bag, thereby preventing anyone else from getting any without waking him up and making him cry.

Moment #2: When my aunt was visiting, we were having a family roast dinner. Due to my brother’s age, he only had a small portion, which, as per usual, he finished quickly. He got upset about something, so my dad passed him over the table to my mum so she could calm him down. As he was passed over my aunt’s plate, he reached out and grabbed a large slice of beef off of her plate and began to eat it, now completely content. The whole movement lasted only a couple of seconds.

Moment #3: Later, in the same visit from my aunt, we had visited a beach a couple of hours’ drive away. My brother once again had a packet of crisps, but this time he was less protective and my aunt was able to take one — she put it in her mouth, lay down on her spot of sand, and closed her eyes to relax. My brother, who was just slightly larger than average toddler, walked over to her, prised her mouth open, took the remains of his crisp out of her mouth, and ate it himself before walking back to his original position to finish his crisps. And that is why my brother became exempt from the snack-stealing rule.

(My daughter is walking about cuddling her kitten, appropriately named Nemesis.)

Daughter: “Mom, why does Nemesis love me?”

(Before I can answer, her 12-year-old brother interjects dryly:)

Son: “Stockholm Syndrome.”