When Zoe pulls off her blindfold, Evelyn says with pride, “I trained her myself.”
What really gets everyone laughing until they can’t breathe, though, is when athletic Ledger and brainy Emerson take the stage, each holding a microphone connected to a karaoke speaker that, by its kiddie look, was purchased when they were much younger.
Ledger starts beatboxing with an impressive level of commitment, while Emerson raps about statistical modeling, of all things. I’m pretty sure that none of us, other than Emerson, even understands much of what he’s rapping, but it makes it all the funnier.
While Ledger is holding the mic close, making “Puh-tss-kah, puh-tss-kah—cha-cha-cha- tss—YUH!” sounds, Emerson is saying things like, “I’m talkin’ linear regression, straight line obsession. Minimizing errors like it’s therapy session. Got a bell curve tighter than Miles’s tux, My R-squared’s clean—don’t need no luck.”
It goes on for several verses before they both finish with a spin, hold their mics out straight, and then simultaneously drop them. Emerson, as if he didn’t just barely stun us all, calmly fixes the shirt collar of his polo, gives a slight nod, then walks off the stage without any of the swagger he wasjust showing.
Charlie is wiping tears from her eyes from laughing so much.
I surprise Charlie, once again, when I stand and take the stage so that Blake and I can perform “A Duet in Three Cavities.” It’s a mock dramatic reading where we combine Blake’s profession of dentistry with mine of building renovation in the most ridiculous way possible.
We have a big tooth we’ve made out of the bottom two-thirds of a gallon milk jug turned upside down, with craft stick scaffolding around it. We hadn’t thought ahead about what to set it on beforehand to be the right height, so we grabbed a couple of empty Amazon boxes at the last minute and stood them on top of each other to make a small table barely wide enough for the tooth and scaffolding.
I’m holding a blueprint like I’m reading a newspaper, and Blake has a dental chart. We use a paintbrush instead of a toothbrush and a measuring tape as dental floss. We’re both wearing safety goggles from our own places of work as we talk about a cavity in a tooth like it’s a crack in an old building.
We get to a part where I say, “A tiny fissure, barely visible. But oh, how it spread,” and I step forward to gesture with my arm to show how it spread. But my knee accidentally hits the bottom box and sends both boxes, the “tooth,” and the scaffolding crashing to the stage.
“And so,” Blake improvises without missing a beat, “the root canal of betrayal began.”
I’m laughing inside, but I manage to keep a serious face as I pull my blueprints over the dead tooth to cover it, and say in a mournful voice, “It never had a fighting chance.” I guess this skit didn’t, either.
Blake crouches down beside the tooth, too, as if he’s paying his respects, and says, “Floss in peace.”
Everyone cheers, and I chuckle all the way back to my seat. Charlie gives me a smile that is so wide and beautiful that I just want to kiss it.
Ledger carries the card table to the stage, and Evelyn places a laptop on it. “Jace and Mackenzie were sad they couldn’t be here with you to celebrate, Charlie. But they didn’t want to miss out on your birthday, so they sent in their entry.” She presses play on a video.
It starts out with both of them, on a beach, saying, “Jace and Mackenzie present,How to Stay Undercover While on a Honeymoon!” Dramatic music plays during clips of things they’ve filmed while on their honeymoon in the most amazing setting I’ve ever seen. Charlie told me that Mackenzie was a huge fan of spy movies, and I love that they used that theme in their video.
There are parts of their mini movie where they are very unsubtly sneaking places, trying on ridiculous costumes to avoid being noticed, attemptingto blend into lounge chairs, and generally being comedically bad spies. Mackenzie says things like, “Day four. Location: undisclosed. Temperature: offensively perfect. Mission: remain covert… and hydrated.”
And Jace says things like, “Most agents rely on earpieces. Amateurs. We use… the coconut comms system,” and “Suspect acquired. Repeat: subject is pacing. Wings flared. Possibly hostile.”
The best part is that they’re filming everything with other vacationers and locals in the background, very much noticing them, with expressions ranging from curious to amused to downright confused. It doesn’t seem to faze Jace or Mackenzie.
At the end of the video, Jace says, “In conclusion: stay alert.”
“Stay unpredictable,” Mackenzie adds.
“And never underestimate a seagull with a vendetta.”
Then, together, they both say, “And happy birthday, Charlie!”
Mackenzie adds, “Remember: trust no one… unless they bring snacks.”
Everyone cheers just as raucously as we did for the other entries, even though Jace and Mackenzie aren’t even present to hear it.
The funny thing is that several of the performances tonight have had a sort of superhero vibe to them. Really inept ones, for sure. But still, if someone wereto tell me that this family was secretly superheroes who were actually good at it, I would buy it.
“Are you ready to choose the winner?” Evelyn asks as Miles, who was apparently the one to win the trophy last year, brings it forward and presents it to Charlie.
“I am.” She stands and takes the stage, facing us. “We had some truly memorable performances tonight—by which I mean I’ve seen things I’ll never be able to unsee, and I wouldn’t trade a single one of them. Thank you all for putting your whole hearts”—she motions at Ledger, “and in some cases, your whole faces—into making my birthday so hilarious and unforgettable. This was the kind of night that makes turning a year older totally worth it.”
She holds up the trophy, which is a bobble-head doll that looks an awful lot like her and is mounted on a trophy base. “And the trophy goes to… Emerson for that rap! I did not know you had it in you, but I will forever respect the way you rhymed ‘variance’ with ‘arrogance’ and made it work.”
We all give the biggest cheer of the night as Emerson comes to the stage and accepts the trophy, “Thank you,” he says, as our applause dies down. “I dedicate this win to my calculator and to Ledger, who provided both percussive support and emotional instability in equal measure.”
