Bad timing involved getting to the bank at 5:01 p.m. on payday or getting a sale paper in the mail the day after the sale. I have since learned, however, that there is one other kind of timing. A timing that transcends both good and bad. It is, of course, Toddler Timing.

My daughter's keen sense of timing first manifested itself during her naptimes. It did not take me long to notice that the length of her nap is inversely proportionate to what I need to accomplish during it. A stack of bills, three loads of laundry, four telephone messages, and a shower on my to-do list invariably translate into a nap that is over before I shut her bedroom door. However, if I need to go to the dry cleaner, the grocery store, the bank and the post office, all before dinner, she'll sleep until its almost bedtime.

Her sense of timing during intimate moments is equally accurate. One morning, in the dusty pre-dawn light, my husband nudged me awake with a smile and a gleam in his eye. The distance between our lips was imperceptible when the nursery monitor crackled and she crowed, "I'm awake now!" Of course, the day we forgot to set the alarm clock, our rooster slept a full hour later than usual.
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She has a knack, too, for starting the most interesting conversations at the most inopportune times. We were in the car with my very proper, sixty-eight-year-old mother-in-law when Rebecca decided to discuss anatomy. Of course, she skipped noses, hands, and knees, and got right to the good stuff.

"Oma," my darling daughter addressed her grandmother, "you are a girl."

I groaned and exchanged a you-know-what's-coming-next glance with my husband.

"That's right." Oma smiled at Rebecca.

"You have a vagina." Rebecca didn't pause for breath as she continued, "Daddy is boy; he has a penis. I do not have a penis. I am a girl. I have a vagina, too!"

"Who taught her that?!" This was clearly never a topic of discussion during my husband's childhood. And has Rebecca brought the subject up to her other, unflappable grandmother? Of course not!

I am gradually accepting the fact that my daughter will spike a fever every time I put on pantyhose and perfume. Since the cordless telephone does not work well in the bathroom, I know she'll have to use the potty every time the phone rings.

Perhaps her sense of timing is a gift, a skill we should help her hone and polish. Maybe she'll develop her talent, one cherished by the comediennes of the world, and become the next Lucille Ball or Helen Hunt.