Birds of a feather stick together.

Every Wednesday night I take my kids out to dinner. We alternate who gets to choose on a weekly basis using our silly mnemonic device “Egad!” The “e” stands for “eat” while the remaining letters represent each of us in the order we get to choose: Gwen, Alex, and Dad. Tonight was a “d” night and I wanted to pick a place that was close where we were (I picked Gwen up from her half-sister’s “Back to School” ice cream social in Overland Park) and there it was — Bob Evans.

If not for Gwen and Alex, I would have easily been the youngest customer in the entire establishment. I’ve always enjoyed the company of older people, having been raised by parents that were both thirty-nine years old when I was born. Seeing the faces of the other customers light up as Alex took off his jacket to drape around his little sister who a mere moment before had said that she was cold was priceless. I even heard one older man say to his wife “Did you see that? Chivalry isn’t dead.” Attaboy, Alex! Grandpa Dan would have been proud.

While we enjoyed our dinner, Gwen produced some slips of paper from her pocket and challenged us to a game of trivia. The lil’ squares of paper she had were various groupings of animals and what those groups were called. You know, a pod of whales or a murder of crows. When I was growing up, I absolutely loved learning those screwy names and trying to figure out how a group of apes came to be called a “shrewdness” of apes. Mind boggling.

So there we boys were, trying to figure out the various names for groupings of animals from Gwen’s cards — and failing miserably, might I add — when I got the idea to use the browser on my cell phone to find a site that contained a whole slew of those types of terms. Bingo, I found the motherlode.

Before long, our table was riddled with laughter as I read aloud the zaniest groupings I could dig up. A flutter of butterflies. A rookery of penguins. A troop of chimpanzees. A coalition of cheetas. A flight of doves. An array of eels. An army of frogs. The list goes on and on.

That’s what I love about these Wednesday night dinners with my kids. Sure, the time we have together is short, but you really can make the best of any moment if you really want to…

If there’s one thing that I’ve always tried to instill in my kids, it’s that learning can be fun if you turn it into a game. That’s why I was so glad when Gwen initially challenged us to name the various groups from her cards but also rewarded us with the card if we got it right. Naturally, though, we had to give the cards back after the game was complete or else we would be subject to incessant hoo-ing, compliments of a parliament of owls. Okay, not really…but I had to throw one more grouping in there.

As the waiter came by to take away our plates, I tore off a corner of the paper placement and created my own card to add to Gwen’s series of animal groupings: “a flush of toilets.” This card was greeted with the stink eye and a grimace from Gwen until Alex began lauging about it. There mere thought of a contractor that would be installing several toilets in a home and using the “proper” term — that I’d just concocted, of course — for a grouping of them cracked me up. Soon, Alex and Gwen got into the act and we were tearing squares of paper from our placemat and feverishly writing our own grouping terms.

Highlights include:

A pick of noses.
A tickle of toes.
A dripping of bacon.
A middle of fingers.
A chump of chumps.
A flat of tires.
A bucket of chum.
A sniff of roses.
A bust of rhymes.
A wipe of bums.
A chew of gum.
A stank of skunks.
A friend of no one.
An apartment of homeless.
A bucket of chicken.
A stupid of $50 (One of Gwen’s four contributions — she’s only seven, she’ll get there).
A dumb of fickle-fongers (Gwen’s second addition).
A dumb of Alex (Gwen’s third submission).
A bossiness of Gwen (Alex’s retort to Gwen’s previous entry).
A dumpster of butter (See? Told you that Gwen would eventually get into the groove!).

Now somewhere in the middle of this frenzied formation of fellowships, I penned what became the favorite of the evening:

A lot of crap.

Ahh, yes. At that point, I had gone from the third youngest customer in the place to the least mature…but damn that was funny at the time. Gwen kept repeating it and giggling for the rest of the evening. Alex was in near tears. I, myself, became pretty tickled at that one for no apparent reason other than my kids were laughing and enjoying everything about our evening together.

Knowing them, and knowing that their memories are in the same vein as mine, they’ll remember tonight’s dinner in a positive light. I’d bet you anything that the next time we’re together we’ll play this game again. I’d even be willing to go as far as to say that years from now we’ll still be joking about “the night at Bob Evan’s when we made up funny names for groups of things.”

That’s what I love about these Wednesday night dinners with my kids. Sure, the time we have together is short, but you really can make the best of any moment if you really want to…and we three proved that point tonight in a quiet little corner of a Bob Evan’s restaurant. We were definitely a gaggle of gigglers.