In Which I Hold It In

This past weekend, The Boss and I went up to my parents house. We had promised them a game night a couple months ago, and were finally making good on our promise. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon with the plans to stay the night after watching the Patriots game (don't even get me started on the outcome of the game. It's still a sore subject).

After we played a few rounds of Uno and before dinner was to be cooked, my mother decided to make some muffins for breakfast the next morning. She is a master baker after all, and often takes any excuse she can get to bake something. She has been on this kick lately of trying out new recipes, and I thought nothing of it until the muffins came out of the oven. They smelled good, but different than I expected them to. I wandered into the kitchen to investigate.

"Something smells good," I commented.

My mother set a tray of muffins on the counter. They were a light golden brown and speckled with what appeared to be cinnamon.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I said. "What kind of muffins are they?"

"They're donut muffins," she said, as if such a thing was commonplace. I had never heard of donut muffins.

"Really?" Perhaps I sounded a little too excited. The prospect of a donut-muffin hybrid was exciting, though.

"Yeah, they're supposed to have the consistency and flavor of a plain donut. It's a new recipe."

"Interesting! I'll have to try one when they cool down a bit."

"They're awesome," my dad chimed in as he entered the room. "They taste just like a donut."

The kitchen fell silent for a moment, and my mother worked to remove the muffins from the tray and put them on a cooling rack. They really did smell wonderful, more like a donut than a muffin.

"So is 'Donut Muffins' their official name?" I asked.

"No, we like to call them Muffnuts," my dad said. There was pure innocence in his voice.

"Yeah, Dunkin' Muffnuts," my mother added.

It was all I could do to not burst out laughing. I bit my lower lip and stared at the floor for a while. The name itself is funny enough, but what really sealed it is the fact that my parents have no idea what they're saying. Their complete and utter innocence about it just makes it hilarious*. The Boss and I laughed pretty hard over it later that evening, giggling in the dark as we tried to go to sleep.

It's like when a little kid swears or performs a rude gesture in public. It's funny because they have no idea what it means or what they are doing. Like the time my 93-year-old great-grandmother talked in length about how she spent the afternoon petting the neighborhood pussy, mentioning how scruffy and smelly it was. "Pussy" to her meant cat, of course, but that word has an entirely new meaning in this day and age.

I just hope my parents don't share that name with the general public or try to market them for their business with that name. I'd hate to have to be the one to break it to them what their clever name really denotes in today's generation.

And for the record, yes, I tried one. Muffnuts are fucking tasty.

Happy Friday, folks. Enjoy your weekend!

*For those of you who are confused as to why this is funny, click here (potentially NSFW).