Secrets From A Two-Year-Old

Today after work I was sitting on the couch, calmly watching TV. It was an ordinary, quiet, homey day—the kind where nothing particularly exciting happens, and that’s exactly what makes it perfect. The evening news droned on about traffic patterns and weather forecasts, providing a comfortable background hum to the end of another workday.

My daughter was moving around nearby, mumbling something to herself, as she does every day. She is only two years old, still mixes up words and speaks very simply, so I hardly paid attention. She had her stuffed rabbit clutched under one arm and was engaged in what appeared to be a very serious conversation with it, complete with hand gestures and stern looks. I’d learned that these conversations were best left uninterrupted unless you wanted a detailed explanation of rabbit politics that somehow always ended with demands for cookies.

I loosened my tie and kicked off my shoes, letting the tension of the day slowly drain away. My wife was upstairs, taking advantage of the rare quiet moment to catch up on some reading. The house smelled faintly of the pot roast we’d had for dinner, mixed with the lavender air freshener my wife insisted made everything feel more “zen.” Personally, I thought it just made everything smell purple, but I’d learned to pick my battles.

Suddenly my daughter came very close to me, her little feet padding across the hardwood floor with surprising determination. She stood right in front of me, blocking my view of the television, crossed her arms and frowned. It was a pose I recognized—she’d clearly been watching my wife whenever I forgot to take out the trash.

“Dad…” she said seriously, her voice carrying that particular tone that meant she had something important to discuss.

“What is it, sweetheart?” I smiled, thinking I was about to hear something about toys or cookies or the injustice of nap time.

“I know a secret.”

I even smiled wider at this. Kids her age were always discovering “secrets”—usually things like where the cat liked to sleep or that the stairs made a creaky sound on the third step.

“Go on, tell me.”

She leaned in closer, her big brown eyes solemn and unblinking.

“You are not grandma’s son.”

I froze. The words hung in the air between us like smoke. At first I thought I had misheard her. Maybe she’d said something about the sun, or fun, or buns—she was still working on her pronunciation, after all.

“What did you say?”

“You are not her son,” she repeated, already a little offended that I hadn’t grasped this crucial information the first time. Her bottom lip pushed out slightly in that pre-pout expression that usually preceded tears.

I laughed nervously, thinking it was just a child’s imagination run wild. Maybe she’d watched something on TV, or misunderstood a conversation. “Why do you think that, sweetie?”

She frowned even more, her little eyebrows drawing together in an expression of pure toddler indignation.

“Don’t laugh. It’s true.”

That was when I started to feel genuinely uneasy. A child that young cannot invent words like that on her own—not with that kind of conviction, not phrased quite that way. Someone must have said it to her. My mind immediately spiraled into dark territory. Had there been whispered conversations I didn’t know about? Old family secrets bubbling to the surface? I thought about my mother’s side of the family, about the aunt nobody talked about, about the mysterious gap in photo albums from the early eighties.

My heart started beating faster, and I realized my palms were actually sweating. This was absurd—I looked exactly like my father, had his same slightly crooked nose and unfortunate hairline. But still, that primitive part of your brain that deals with existential threats was suddenly very alert.

“Sweetheart, did grandma tell you that?”

“No.”

“Mom?”

“No.”

I bent down toward her, getting on her eye level, trying to read her face for any sign of where this had come from. “Then who told you this?”

She looked at me very carefully, with that unnerving toddler ability to stare directly into your soul, and said, in her simple, childlike language, something that left me completely shocked.

“Me.”

“How, you?” I didn’t understand. “You just… thought of this yourself?”

She began to explain as best she could, her tiny hands gesturing for emphasis, her face the picture of absolute seriousness—the kind of expression usually reserved for explaining why she couldn’t possibly eat her vegetables because they were “too green.”

“You don’t look alike. Grandma is pretty. She has pretty hair. Pretty lips. A dress with flowers.”

She paused, looked at me with the critical eye of a miniature art critic examining a particularly disappointing piece of modern art, and added with devastating honesty:

“And you… yuck.”

The word hit me like a small, soft punch to the gut. I sat back on my heels, not sure whether to laugh or be offended.

“What do you mean ‘yuck’?” I couldn’t help asking, caught between relief that this wasn’t some deep family secret and a growing offense at being aesthetically rejected by a person who still sometimes put her shoes on the wrong feet.

“You have scratchy stubble,” she said, reaching out and patting my cheek with her small hand as if to demonstrate the evidence. “And hair here.” She pointed to my chest with her finger, wrinkling her nose like she’d discovered something deeply disappointing. I’d changed into a t-shirt after work, and apparently the bit of chest hair visible at the collar had not escaped her notice.

“You’re not pretty. So she’s not your mom.”

The logic was airtight, at least in the mind of a two-year-old who had apparently decided that genetic relationships were determined entirely by aesthetic principles and the presence or absence of body hair.

Then she leaned closer to me and whispered conspiratorially, her breath smelling faintly of apple juice and the graham crackers she’d had for a snack:

“Just don’t tell anyone. Grandma will be upset.”

At first I stayed silent, processing the fact that my two-year-old daughter had just delivered a genetic analysis based entirely on prettiness levels and had somehow concluded that I was adopted, or possibly delivered by a particularly unattractive stork. The relief was enormous—not because I’d been genuinely worried, though for about thirty seconds I absolutely had been, but because the alternative had been so absurd and yet so briefly terrifying.

Then I burst out laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes. The kind of laughter that comes from the release of tension, from the absurdity of taking a toddler’s observation as potentially factual, from the sheer ridiculousness of being called “yuck” by someone who regularly needed help wiping her own nose.

I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone, crossing my heart with exaggerated solemnity, my hand over my chest in a solemn pledge.

She nodded, satisfied with this oath of secrecy, and toddled off to terrorize her stuffed animals. I watched her go, settling her rabbit into her toy kitchen and beginning to scold it for something—probably also being yuck.

I sat back on the couch, my heart rate slowly returning to normal, and realized my hands were shaking slightly. The human mind is a strange thing. For those brief seconds, I’d actually entertained the possibility that my entire understanding of my family might be wrong. That somewhere in the past, there was a secret, a lie, a truth that had been carefully hidden.

All because a two-year-old had decided I was too ugly to be my mother’s son.

I picked up my phone and almost texted my wife, but decided this story needed to be told in person. Then I almost called my mother, but something stopped me. Maybe it was the same instinct that makes you not look up your symptoms on the internet when you have a headache. Sometimes, even when you know something is ridiculous, you don’t want to jinx it by acknowledging it out loud.

Instead, I just sat there, listening to my daughter explain to her rabbit why it couldn’t have any pretend tea because it had been “very naughty,” and marveled at the way children could completely derail your evening with a single observation.

That evening, we were all gathered in the kitchen for dinner. My mother had come over, as she does most Thursdays, a tradition that started when I was first married and my wife admitted she couldn’t figure out my mother’s lasagna recipe no matter how many times she tried. So now, every Thursday, my mother brought her famous lasagna and enough dessert to feed a small army, and we pretended this was a casual drop-by rather than a scheduled weekly event that everyone’s calendar revolved around.

My wife was setting the table, humming something under her breath—I thought it might be that song from the coffee commercial, but with her you could never be sure. She had a habit of mashing up three different songs without realizing it, creating what she called “medleys” and what I called “auditory chaos.”

I poured drinks—water for everyone except my mother, who got her customary glass of white wine, which she’d nurse for the entire meal while insisting she “barely drinks anymore.” The kitchen was warm and smelled incredible, like garlic and tomato and cheese and every good thing in the world combined.

My daughter sat in her high chair, swinging her legs and observing us all with that unnerving toddler intensity—the kind that makes you wonder if they’re secretly taking notes for a future tell-all memoir. She had her favorite bib on, the one with the cartoon elephants that she insisted on wearing even though she’d long outgrown it and it barely covered anything anymore.

We made small talk as we served the food—my mother asking about work, my wife talking about the new book club she’d joined, me trying to remember if I’d locked my car and wondering why that thought always comes at the least convenient times.

Halfway through dinner, as I was reaching for my second helping of garlic bread, my daughter suddenly put down her fork with a dramatic clatter that made everyone look up.

“Grandma,” she announced, her voice carrying across the table with the authority of a tiny judge about to deliver a verdict.

My mother looked up, smiling that warm grandmother smile that made her whole face light up. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“I know a secret.”

My wife and I exchanged glances. I tried very hard not to laugh, pressing my lips together and finding sudden intense interest in my plate. I could feel my wife’s eyes on me, questioning, but I didn’t dare look up or I’d lose it completely.

My mother leaned in, playing along with the game, completely unsuspecting. “Oh? What secret is that?”

My daughter looked around the table as if checking for eavesdroppers or surveillance devices, her eyes going wide with the importance of her mission. Then she whispered, though her whisper was about as subtle as a foghorn:

“Daddy is not your son.”

The room went completely silent.

The kind of silence that feels like someone has pressed pause on reality. The refrigerator’s hum suddenly seemed incredibly loud. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. My mother’s fork froze midway to her mouth, suspended in air like a magic trick gone wrong.

My wife’s eyes went wide, her mouth opening slightly in surprise. I covered my mouth with my hand, trying desperately not to burst out laughing, my shoulders shaking with the effort of containing it.

“What?” my mother asked, her voice a mix of confusion and amusement, setting her fork down carefully as if sudden movements might startle the situation into making sense.

My daughter nodded solemnly, clearly pleased to be delivering such important information. This was her moment, and she was going to make it count. She launched into her explanation again, this time with even more conviction, her hands gesturing expressively.

“You don’t look the same. You are pretty. You have pretty hair and a pretty dress with flowers.”

She gestured at my mother’s floral blouse as evidence, exhibit A in the case of why I couldn’t possibly be related to her. My mother looked down at her blouse as if seeing it for the first time.

“And Daddy…”

She turned to look at me with an expression of genuine pity, the kind you might give to a puppy with three legs or a plant that just wasn’t thriving despite your best efforts.

“Daddy is yuck. He has scratchy face and hair everywhere. So he can’t be your baby.”

My mother’s confusion transformed into delight. Her face went from puzzled to understanding to absolutely gleeful in the span of about three seconds. She threw her head back and laughed—a real, full-bellied laugh that echoed through the kitchen and made her earrings jingle. It was the kind of laugh that made you want to laugh too, even if you had no idea what was funny.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she managed between gasps, wiping at her eyes with her napkin, “that’s very observant of you. Very logical.”

My daughter beamed, interpreting this as confirmation of her detective work and scientific method. She sat up straighter in her high chair, proud of herself for cracking the case.

My wife, who had been holding her breath, finally let out a snort of laughter that she tried to disguise as a cough. “She told him the same thing this afternoon,” she explained, her voice shaking with suppressed laughter. “We thought she’d overheard something. He was genuinely worried for about thirty seconds.”

“Worried?” My mother looked at me, her eyebrows raised. “You actually thought—”

“For like half a second,” I defended myself. “She was very convincing! And very serious! You don’t understand the way she presented this information. It was like a prosecutor laying out evidence.”

“That I was too ugly to be your son.”

“Well,” my mother said, trying to keep a straight face and failing, “she’s not entirely wrong about the ugly part.”

“Mom!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” she said, though her eyes were still dancing with amusement. “You’re very handsome. In a yuck, hairy sort of way.”

My wife completely lost it at that, dissolving into giggles, nearly spilling her water.

My daughter nodded enthusiastically, vindicated. “Yes! Yuck and hairy!”

My mother reached across the table and took my daughter’s tiny hand in hers, her eyes soft with affection. “Well, you’re absolutely right, darling. Your daddy is not as pretty as me.”

“Hey,” I protested weakly.

“But,” my mother continued, her eyes twinkling with mischief and affection, “I promise you, he is my son. I remember it very clearly because it took seventeen hours and I’ve never quite forgiven him for it.”

“Mom, please, we’re eating.”

“Even if he is yuck,” she finished, squeezing my daughter’s hand.

My daughter looked skeptical but willing to accept this on authority, the way you might accept that vegetables are good for you even though they clearly aren’t. She picked up her fork again and returned to her dinner, apparently satisfied that she’d done her civic duty by revealing this crucial information to all relevant parties.

“You know,” my wife said, trying very hard to keep a straight face and failing as she looked between me and my mother, “this is going to be a story we tell at her wedding.”

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.

“Oh, absolutely yes,” my mother countered, her voice full of wicked delight. “The day my granddaughter determined biological relationships based on aesthetic compatibility and body hair distribution. It’s gold. Pure gold. I’m already planning the speech.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’ll include charts,” my mother continued, warming to the theme. “Pie charts showing the ratio of pretty to yuck in our family tree. Maybe a PowerPoint presentation.”

“I’m going to die,” I muttered.

My daughter, oblivious to the archiving of her future embarrassment and the planning of her wedding humiliation, was now singing a song about dinosaurs and completely ignoring all of us. It was a song of her own invention, with lyrics that rhymed “dinosaur” with “store” and “floor” and somehow also “banana.”

The rest of dinner passed in a blur of laughter and teasing. Every time I thought we’d moved on to a different topic, my mother would catch my eye and mouth “yuck” at me, sending my wife into fresh peals of laughter.

My daughter, having delivered her bombshell, had returned to more pressing toddler concerns, like whether she could have dessert before finishing her vegetables (no), and whether dinosaurs would eat lasagna if given the opportunity (probably).

As my mother was leaving, she hugged me extra tight at the door.

“You know I think you’re beautiful, right?” she said softly.

“Even though I’m yuck?”

“Especially because you’re yuck,” she said, patting my cheek exactly the way my daughter had earlier. “You get that from your father’s side. All the men were yuck. It’s genetic.”

“That’s not comforting, Mom.”

“Wasn’t meant to be,” she said cheerfully. “See you next Thursday. I’ll bring extra lasagna for my yuck son.”

After she left, I found my wife in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher and still giggling to herself.

“You okay?” she asked.

“My self-esteem has taken a severe beating today.”

“From a two-year-old.”

“From everyone, apparently. My own mother joined in!”

She came over and wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on my chest—probably right where the offending hair was visible.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think you’re very handsome.”

“Yeah?”

“In a yuck kind of way.”

I groaned, and she laughed, and from the living room came my daughter’s voice:

“Daddy is yuck but I love him!”

“See?” my wife said. “She loves you. Even though you’re yuck. That’s true love right there.”

Later that night, after my daughter was tucked into bed—a process that took the usual forty-five minutes and included three stories, two glasses of water, and one lengthy negotiation about whether the stuffed rabbit needed its own blanket—my wife and I sat on the couch together. The house was finally quiet, the chaos of the evening settling into that comfortable exhaustion that comes with parenting.

The TV was on, but neither of us was really watching it. Some detective show was playing, all moody lighting and dramatic music, but it was just background noise.

“You know what the scary part was?” I said, staring at the ceiling.

“What?”

“For about thirty seconds, I actually wondered if there was something I didn’t know. Like, what if my mom had some secret she’d been keeping for forty years? What if I really wasn’t her son and everyone just decided not to tell me?”

My wife turned to look at me, eyebrows raised. “Seriously? You genuinely considered that?”

“I mean, not seriously seriously. But for a second, my brain went there. Because how else would a two-year-old say something like that? With that kind of conviction? That level of detail?”

She laughed and shook her head. “You gave a toddler way too much credit. You know she also told me yesterday that the mailman was actually a robot sent from the future, right? And that our cat could talk but chose not to because he was ‘tired of our nonsense.’ Should we have believed those too?”

“This felt different.”

“It felt different because it touched on something primal. The need to know where we come from, who we are.” She snuggled closer to me. “But you know who you look like? Your dad. Especially in photos from when he was your age. Same nose, same eyes, same unfortunate hairline pattern that you’re desperately pretending isn’t happening.”

“It’s not happening.”

“It’s definitely happening.”

“Can we return to the topic at hand, which is my daughter’s character assassination?”

She laughed. “Okay, fine. But you have to admit, from a purely logical standpoint, her reasoning was sound. In a completely illogical, two-year-old way.”

“She created an entire theory of genetic inheritance based on prettiness.”

“And you have to admit,” my wife said, a dangerous tone creeping into her voice, “your mother is significantly more attractive than you.”

I grabbed a throw pillow and threatened her with it. She dissolved into giggles, holding up her hands in surrender.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding! You’re very handsome. In a yuck, hairy, possibly-not-related-to-your-mother sort of way.”

“I hate both of you,” I muttered, but I was smiling.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while, and then my wife said, “You know what’s funny? She’s going to grow up and completely forget she said this. Twenty years from now, she won’t remember any of it.”

“But we’ll remember forever.”

“That’s the thing about kids,” I said. “They say stuff that just lodges in your brain. Twenty years from now, when she’s bringing home her first serious boyfriend or girlfriend, I’ll still remember the day my daughter told me I was too ugly to be related to my own mother.”

“And the way she whispered it like it was a state secret.”

“‘Don’t tell anyone. Grandma will be upset.'”

We both started laughing again, that comfortable married laughter that comes from shared absurdity and too many years of inside jokes.

From the baby monitor on the coffee table, we heard a small voice, quiet but clear.

“Daddy?”

I picked up the monitor, pressing the button. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“I forgot to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

There was a pause, and I could picture her in her bed, probably hugging her rabbit, her eyes already half-closed with sleep.

“You’re still yuck. But I love you anyway.”

My wife covered her mouth to muffle her laughter, her whole body shaking with it.

I felt my heart swell despite the insult, that particular feeling that only your kids can give you—the simultaneous experience of being completely destroyed and completely loved.

“I love you too, baby,” I said, my voice catching slightly. “Go to sleep now.”

“Okay. Goodnight, yuck daddy.”

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

The monitor went quiet, and for a moment the only sound was my wife’s muffled laughter and the distant hum of the refrigerator.

My wife leaned against my shoulder, still shaking with silent laughter. “That,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “is going on her wedding video for sure.”

I sighed, resigned to my fate as the yuck father who would be roasted at his daughter’s wedding by his own mother with visual aids. “At least she said she loves me.”

“True. Even though you’re yuck.”

“Even though I’m yuck.”

And somehow, in that moment, with my wife laughing against my shoulder and my daughter’s sleepy voice still echoing from the monitor, being called yuck felt like the highest compliment I’d ever received.

The next morning, I woke up to my daughter standing beside the bed, her face inches from mine, studying me with the intensity of a scientist examining a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope. Her breath was warm on my face, and she smelled like the strawberry toothpaste she’d insisted on eating directly from the tube before bed despite our protests.

“Still yuck,” she announced with the finality of a judge delivering a sentence, then padded out of the room, her mission accomplished.

My wife, still half-asleep, mumbled something incoherent that might have been words or might have been the sound of someone actively trying to return to unconsciousness.

“Your daughter is a monster,” she finally managed, her face still pressed into her pillow.

“She gets it from you,” I replied, swinging my legs out of bed and contemplating whether I had the energy for this day.

“She gets her brutal honesty from you,” she countered, finally turning to look at me with one eye open. “I, at least, have tact. I would never tell someone they were yuck. I would say they were ‘aesthetically challenged’ or ‘unconventionally attractive.'”

“How kind of you.”

“I’m a saint.”

I was about to argue this characterization when my daughter reappeared in the doorway, her rabbit tucked under one arm and her blanket dragging behind her.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, baby?” My wife sat up, trying to look more awake than she was.

“Are you Daddy’s mommy?”

Oh no. Here we go again. I could feel the conversation derailing before it even started.

“No, sweetie. I’m Daddy’s wife.”

My daughter frowned, her little brain working through this new information, trying to fit it into her existing understanding of how relationships worked. “So who is Daddy’s mommy?”

“Grandma is Daddy’s mommy.”

The frown deepened. “But he’s yuck and she’s pretty.”

My wife sat up fully now, suddenly very awake and clearly trying not to laugh. I could see her fighting it, her lips pressing together, her shoulders starting to shake. “Yes, that’s true. But sometimes pretty mommies have yuck babies.”

“Oh.” My daughter absorbed this information solemnly, nodding like this was a profound truth she’d have to remember. Then, as if a lightbulb had gone off over her head, her eyes widened with a new concern. “Am I yuck too?”

“No, baby,” I interjected quickly, perhaps too quickly. “You’re beautiful.”

“Like Grandma?”

“Even more beautiful than Grandma.”

She considered this, tilting her head to one side and examining her reflection in the mirror on our closet door. She turned to one side, then the other, apparently conducting a thorough self-assessment.

Finally, she nodded, satisfied with both the answer and her reflection. “Okay. Only you are yuck.”

“Only me,” I agreed, wondering at what point in my life I’d accepted being the designated yuck family member.

She skipped away, her crisis of identity resolved, her blanket trailing behind her like a cape. I could hear her going down the stairs, narrating her descent: “Step, step, step, no falling, good job me.”

My wife collapsed back onto the pillow, her shoulders shaking with laughter. “I can’t. I physically cannot handle this child.”

“She’s your daughter too, you know.”

“Right now? She’s all yours. This is what you get for passing on your yuck genes.”

“I thought we established that came from my father’s side.”

“Still your genes,” she said, pulling the blanket over her head. “You deal with it. I’m going back to sleep.”

I got out of bed and headed to the kitchen to start coffee, my morning ritual and the only thing standing between me and complete dysfunction. My daughter was already in there, sitting at her little table, drawing with crayons, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration.

“What are you drawing, sweetheart?”

She held up the paper proudly, and I felt my stomach drop in a mixture of amusement and horror.

It was a stick figure family: a tall woman with yellow scribbles for hair and what appeared to be a dress decorated with flowers, a smaller woman with brown hair, a tiny figure with pigtails, and off to the side, separated from the group by what looked like an ocean or possibly a wall, a figure covered in black scribbles.

“This is Grandma, this is Mommy, this is me, and this is you.”

I stared at the drawing, at my scribbled, hairy, isolated stick figure, banished to the edge of the page like some kind of family outcast.

“Why am I over there by myself?”

She looked at me like this should be obvious. “Because you’re yuck. You don’t match us. Pretty people go together.” She pointed to the grouped figures. “Yuck people go here.” She pointed to my lonely figure.

“That’s very… accurate,” I said, not sure whether to laugh or be genuinely hurt that I’d been artistically exiled from my own family.

She beamed at what she interpreted as praise, clearly proud of her organizational skills and aesthetic judgment.

I made my coffee and sat down next to her, watching as she added more details to the drawing: flowers around Grandma, a sun in the corner wearing sunglasses for some reason, and what I could only assume were birds but looked more like aggressive blobs with beaks.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“When I’m big, will I be yuck too?”

The question caught me off guard. I set down my coffee cup and thought about how to answer this, about whether to explain genetics or aging or the inevitable decline of physical appearance, or whether to just stick with something simple.

“No, sweetheart. You’ll be beautiful forever.”

“Good.” She went back to her drawing, adding what appeared to be a rainbow, though it only had three colors and they were all on the same side. Then she paused, her crayon hovering over the paper. “But if I’m yuck, you’ll still love me?”

My heart did that thing it does when your kid asks you something that’s simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming.

“Always. No matter what.”

“Even if I have scratchy face?”

I laughed, imagining my daughter as a teenager, horrified by the possibility of facial hair. “Even if you have scratchy face.”

She nodded, reassured by this unconditional acceptance, and continued her artistic masterpiece. She added a dog to the picture, though we didn’t have a dog. When I pointed this out, she informed me that it was a “future dog” and his name was Mr. Pickles and he would only like the pretty people, not me.

“That seems fair,” I said.

And I sat there, drinking terrible coffee that I’d made too weak because I was still half-asleep, watching my two-year-old daughter—my brilliant, hilarious, occasionally devastating two-year-old daughter—and thought about how one day, years from now, I’d tell her this story.

About the day she decided I wasn’t related to my own mother because I was too ugly.

About how she’d whispered it like a state secret meant only for my ears.

About how she’d told everyone anyway within twelve hours.

About how she’d drawn me as a hairy stick figure, separate from the family, possibly separated by an ocean.

About how she’d created an entire aesthetic-based system of family organization.

And about how, despite calling me yuck approximately seventy-three times in forty-eight hours (I’d started counting), she’d still crawled into my lap that evening and fallen asleep on my chest, her tiny hand clutching my shirt, her breath warm against my neck.

Because that’s the thing about kids.

They’ll destroy your ego with surgical precision, question your genetic legitimacy based on aesthetic standards, immortalize your ugliness in crayon, exile you to the edge of family portraits, and create dogs that don’t like you.

But at the end of the day, they’ll still choose you.

Even if you’re yuck.

Especially if you’re yuck.

Because maybe, just maybe, being yuck means you’re the safe place to land. The scratchy face to nuzzle into. The hairy chest to fall asleep on. The imperfect, unconventionally attractive, aesthetically challenged, genetically questionable parent who loves them more than anything in the world.

And as my daughter added a crown to Grandma’s stick figure and what appeared to be horns to mine, I realized something: I was okay with being yuck.

Because if being pretty meant I couldn’t make my daughter laugh until juice came out of her nose, or couldn’t give the best scratchy-face kisses, or couldn’t be the dad who didn’t match but loved her anyway, then I’d choose yuck every single time.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“You’re my favorite yuck person.”

And just like that, every insult, every exile to the edge of the paper, every comparison to my much prettier mother, every whispered secret about my genetic impossibility—it all became worth it.

“You’re my favorite person, period,” I said.

She smiled, adding a cape to my stick figure.

“Because even yuck people can be superheroes,” she explained.

“Exactly.”

And somehow, in the logic of a two-year-old who had decided that family relationships were based on prettiness levels and that dogs from the future could be selective about their affection, that made perfect sense.

I was the yuck superhero.

And I’d never been more proud of a title in my entire life.