How Elmo helped me teach my daughter the meaning of sarcasm.

Last night before bed, as we waited for her cold medicine to kick in so she could breathe/sleep, I asked Ambriel what she could remember of the car accident we were in when she was two-and-a-half. While her overall account had some major holes in it, I was thrilled that she mentioned how Elmo was being sarcastic (and yes, she used that word correctly and pronounced it beautifully) and making fun of Papa by telling him "Good job! Good job!"
For the sake of helping the rest of you to understand how Elmo helped me teach my daughter about sarcasm, I'll tell you the rest of the story.
On a beautiful August day, Ambriel and I were riding in the backseat of my parents car as we drove through West Virginia on the way home from helping my sister move to Florida. My dad was driving, my mom was navigating, Ambriel was sitting behind my dad, and I was next to her, trying to entertain her. Then, as my mom was attempting to take a drink from her water bottle and I was looking at Ambriel, my dad changed lanes to get around a slow car only to see a large, round metal piece off of a bull dozer tread. He had no time to brake or get back in the other lane, so he just centered the car to go over it and prayed we would clear it.
We did not. Instead, we went airborne, the air bags deployed, and we slowly skidded to a stop safely on the edge of the expressway. We grown-ups were pretty stunned, though unharmed, so Ambriel was the first to speak coherently when she cried "Papa's hat is on me and I'm all wet!"
I was confused at first, but then I realized that when the air bags went off, they knocked my dad's hat off his head and into her lap, and my mom's water bottle out of her hand and splashing all over Ambriel. We all started laughing a little then, and assured Ambriel that everything was okay. We all got out of the car, then, as we waited for the police and tow truck to come, but we heard a strange voice coming from the trunk of the car.
When my dad popped the trunk, we saw that the impact had shifted our luggage in such a way that Ambriel's talking Elmo potty, which said encouraging phrases when you pressed Elmo's hand for a "high 5" and which my mom had insisted we bring in case Ambriel had to "go" between rest stops, was wedged up against the inside of the trunk with his hand pressed so that he just kept repeating "Good job!" over and over. Again, we all laughed and told Elmo to ease up on my dad and stop being sarcastic.
Now I don't know if Ambriel really had any idea what we meant at the time, but she has heard us tell the story of how Grandma's Camry died, and Elmo is always a big part of the tale. I'm just impressed that she made the connection between that story and my explanations of my own sarcasm. I imagine I will be less impressed with this talent when she's a tween or teen aiming her sarcasm at me, but that's a worry for another day. ;0)