Need to laugh? Talk to a 3-year-old.

My friend's 3-soon-to-be-4-year-old loves to have "puzzle races" with her mom, and until last week, it was purely a race. Mommy does a bigger puzzle, and whoever finishes first is the winner.

My friend called last week. "She figured out how to cheat yesterday," she said.

"How's she do that?" I asked. "It's a puzzle race."

"She saw that I was winning, and she started grabbing pieces out of my puzzle and throwing them across the kitchen."

I don't care who you are — that's hilarious.

"What'd you do?" I asked, laughing pretty hard.

"I tried to tell her that she can't do that, that it's wrong and that I'll have to punish her if she does it again, but it was really, really hard to not laugh while I was saying it."

This same little girl has developed a sudden and inexplicable fear of using any toilet but the ones in her own house. "She won't even go at my parents' house," my friend said. "It's really bad at the Rec Center."

After one swimming lesson, the "I-don't-wanna" fit lasted from the time she left the pool 'til they were walking across the parking lot to the car.

Next swimming lesson: Lesson ended, and my friend asked her daughter if she needed to pee.

"Nah. I peed BIG-time in the pool," she shouted to her mom.

"I wanted to die," my friend said.

Finally, my friend's "deal with it" phrase is "tough toenails, kid." It started in junior high school, and it's stuck ever since. We all say it.

So she says it to her daughter when she complains about something.

"Tough toenails, kid."

"Mommy! Stop calling me 'tough toenails!' That's NOT my name!"

I don't need kids of my own. Not now. I get too much of a kick out of my friends' kids.