Sleep In.

This morning Jube and I had a breakfast of supermarket croissants. Around one o’clock, he started thinking about making lunch and went to the kitchen to consider our options. He called out to me, “What should we eat for lunch?”

“Dunno,” I called back.

“Dunno!” he said. “You like those two syllables, don’t you? You should write a thank-you letter to whoever invented those two syllables. ‘Dun-no.’ And those two syllables mean so much more than just ‘I don’t know!’ They mean ‘I don’t want to cook.’ They mean ‘I know we have to go shopping, but I don’t want to think about it.’ And they also mean ‘I wash my hands of the subject and you have to do everything.’”

I smiled at him from my place at the computer.

He rolled his eyes and said, “You’re a pest!”

“Fine,” I said, “What do you want to eat?”

“Dunno,” he said.

Except it was in French, and went more like this:

Jube calls out to me from the kitchen, « Qu’est-ce qu’on va manger à midi? »

« Chais pas. »

« Eh ben ! Tu aimes ces deux mots ! Tu devrais écrire une lettre de remerciement à celui qui a inventé ces deux mots. « Chais pas. » Et en plus tu peux dire plein de choses avec ces deux mots. Ça veut dire « je ne sais pas. » Ça veut dire aussi « j’ai pas envie de faire de la cuisine. » Et aussi « je sais qu’il faut faire les courses, mais je ne veux pas y penser. » Et finalement ça veut dire « je m'en lave les mains et c’est toi qui vas tout faire. »

I smile.

He shakes his head, looking at me at the computer. « Tu es une peste. »

I ask, « Alors qu’est-ce que tu veux manger ? »

He looks at me and clearly enunciates, « Chais pas. »