I take you back to two summers ago, not to make you long for summer, but because that’s where this story begins.

Your Daily Lex.

It was, I guess, two summers ago when Liam did a summer program at Berklee, the Berklee School of Music, Berklee College of Music, I don’t know, in Boston.

He had very recently gotten an iPhone, which we gave him specifically because of his attending this thing.

He was young to be attending this summer program, and I stayed with him in a hotel all week because he was too young to stay on campus the way that most students would.

And so I would drop him off each morning, work from the hotel, and then pick him up.

And he would text me to let me know if there were any changes or if I needed to come later, earlier, for whatever reason, whatever.

And he would sometimes text me and Lauren, even though Lauren was home in New Jersey.

And the first day, he wanted to let us know about how some things were going when he had a little bit of downtime.

And he’s like, oh, I’m definitely …

He wanted to tell us, I’m the best piano player.

And what he wrote and sent was, I am the best pants.

I, of course, immediately renamed our chat, the group text between me, Liam, and Lauren to Liam is the best pants.

And he’s like, no, it’s not.

I’m not the best pants.

I’m like, nope, sorry, you’re the best pants.

And for a little while, he decided he would proudly refer to himself as the best pants.

But then he decided he hated that.

But of course, we told his older siblings the same story, and they enjoyed it a lot.

And all of them ended up renaming their group chats with us.

So I’m in a chat with Ani that says, Ani is the best pants, which is clearly not true because Liam is the best pants.

The Sierra group chat with me and Lauren is …

I forget exactly what she calls it.

It’s like, hang on, let me find it right now.

I’m typing in real time.

It is Sierra …

Oh, okay, so here it is.

The one that’s Sierra and her parents is called Pants and Sierra.

The one that I have with Sierra and Ani and me is Father Ani Sierra Pants, all named by the cats.

And Liam hates to be referred to as the best pants.

Now, I’m going to tell you what our current Lex, Lauren, Liam group chat is called.

But I warn you, it is puerile or juvenile or both of those things.

So Liam loves white noise.

So every night we tell his Echo, by addressing it by its name, play white noise, and we also use it to set an alarm.

And every once in a while, we’ll say stupid things to it if we have an extra couple minutes before bedtime.

And the last time this happened was a while ago, but it was, you know, play …

Sometimes when I’m turning on his white noise, I’ll say, Echo, play white noise or play horrible zombies screaming.

And I wait to say the second after I know it’s stopped listening and is going to play just the white noise.

And oh, we laugh.

We have a good laugh.

So that’s why I’ll say, you know, play the poopy song.

And here’s the thing.

Smart entrepreneurial musicians, if we can call them that, have created lots of songs with juvenile goofy names because kids will tell their Echoes to play the poopy song or the fart song or the butt song or whatever.

So all of these songs exist.

And at some point a couple of years ago, we discovered a band this way called Mr.

Farts.

Mr.

Farts has many hits that I encourage you to ignore, but one of them is, I believe it’s called Farting Around the House.

I mean, honestly, it’s a banger.

It’s a pretty good song.

I’m not going to lie to you.

But a woman sings, we’ve been farting around the house with Mr.

Farts, and she is really into it.

Like this woman is not tongue in cheek.

She’s not winking.

She is singing her heart out.

And she also talks, there’s a chorus, it’s Big Fart, Little Fart, Smelly Fart, and you cannot listen to this or sing along to it or anything without laughing because it is so ridiculous.

But at some point, our group chat, mine, Lauren’s, Liam’s, got renamed to BFLFSF, which stands for Big Fart, Little Fart, Smelly Fart.

I maintain that I am, that in fact, the LF stands for Lex Friedman.

Lauren and Liam, for some reason, object to that, but there is a frequent debate over who is whom in the BFLFSF situation.

So yeah, I was just thinking about that today when I was seeing texts from my kids in these various permutations of group chats with ridiculous names.

So I thought I would share that with you for, I don’t know, four and a half minutes of ridiculousness as a respite from your day.

Happy Monday, everybody.

Lex!