A Gamboa Classic

Have you ever heard of giving someone the BOD?  Generally, it means to give someone the Benefit Of the Doubt.

An Evil Genius!!

Okay, okay, I'll explain!  In my family, we have a couple classic stories from the childhood of some of our siblings.  There's the brown sugar story, which has to be told by Camille (I wouldn't even try to explain this one - it has to be experienced), the fudge story, and there's the BOD story.  (There's probably a few others that I'm forgetting too.  They probably involve scars and getting lost as a child.)

This story is probably only funny if you know my little brother Lucas, but I tell it all the time and people find it funny sometimes, so here we go.  

Gamboa family tradition: When you turn 7, you've somehow earned the right to a trip to Disneyland with Grandma.  No one knows why, other than my Grandma has done this with all of her grandchildren, and simply because Disneyland is awesome.  Anyways, by the time my youngest brother was 7, my Grandma was having a little bit of trouble getting around (not to mention going on rides), so she just gave my sister Camille the money to take Luc to D-land.  (Which is actually totally not fair because Camille got to go to Disneyland.  Boo).  

Anyways, as such folk lore goes, I've lost a little bit of the details of the story, bit the gist is still there.  Which is that in some line, Camille and Luc were stuck by some kid who was being really annoying.  As little kids tend to do after a days worth of walking around an amusement park.  Anyways, my sister turns to Luc, and in an inspired teaching moment that she had as a 17 year-old big sister, she tells him to give the kid the BOD (obviously meaning the Benefit of the Doubt).  

Luc, being at the ripe maturity of a seven-year-old, didn't get what that meant.  So when Camille asked Luc if he knew what that meant, he thought for a second, then turned and said, "Beating Of Death?"  in a moment of pure Disney magic.  

So now, whenever my family deems that someone deserves the BOD, there's always that sort of question in the back of our heads about which one we'll give.