Kids are naturally curious and Tristan, our fourth born child was no different.
When Tris was about two and a half he still took baths with his six year old sister. As it was my turn to be monitor of this liquid playground I noticed Tris staring at the obvious difference in anatomy between them. I couldn’t resist and asked him:
“What you looking at Tris?”
With a concerned look he pointed at his sister’s lack of one of his favorite toys, the “PeePee”.
He asked “what happened to her?” I thoroughly blame the sadly recently disgraced comedian, Bill Cosby, for this as I replied:
“Oh, that, well, she played with hers and it fell off.”
His look of shock and horror was priceless. I’m a bad dad. A very, very, bad dad.
One day I was out in the garage, trying to make a semblance of order out of the debris of life that usually ends up in the garage when you can’t find anyplace else to put it. On this occasion, as I was working, I could swear I could smell smoke. Looking around I noticed that my new work lights were facing right next to the wall. Sure enough, they were on. Two 500 watt halogen lights face first against plywood siding. No wonder I could smell smoke! After I turned them off and unplugged them to assure no further risk to my homeowners insurance I went into the house to question the children as to how this happened. After assembling the motley crew and lining them up by size, I proceeded with the questioning.
“Who was playing with my new work lights in the garage?”
Silence, accompanied by four pairs of eyes staring straight ahead, was the answer. This is standard kid behavior, say nothing and stare straight ahead until you find out what he knows.
“Well?” the interrogator asked, “Who was it? You know you could have burned the garage down?”
I still got nothing but silence and blank stares off into oblivion. I studied each face closely but they maintained their statue like poise.
“Rats!” I thought to myself, “They’re getting good at this, time for another tactic”.
“Ok” I said, “must have been someone else.”
As I walked out of the room, in my peripheral vision, which is an acquired talent of all parents, I noticed the looks of disbelief from my children. They were thinking
“He’s given up! He must be getting old.”
I had my suspicions as to the guilty party as the garage was the favorite haunt of our first son, Benjamin.
It was several weeks later that during a trip home from the local Blockbuster with a movie and a game rental I casually asked Ben
“So, were you just curious as to how bright the work lights were in the garage?”
“Yeah”, he replied “They sure are bright”.
I nodded in agreement and remained silent while I observed my son sitting next to me in the car reminiscing on the dazzling display of light as a look of concern slowly came across his face. As I get older I just love the things you learn. Patience and a long memory are two of those things.
Silence is dangerous when children are concerned. Give me a houseful of noise and I’ll show you relaxed parents. Any length of silence is concerning, especially when you have one of the kids in the bathtub. A standing rule in our home was that the bathroom door was never to be locked when the occupant was less that 5’ tall and not of drinking age.
This time it was Ben in the bath. I noticed that the usual noise had ceased emanating from the bathroom and I grew concerned. Not that I was actually concerned with the boy’s well being as I had already come to the conclusion that this boy was nearly indestructible and his last words would be ,
“Hey everybody, watch this!”
My concern was for the bathroom. Surely this silence did not bode well for the fixtures. I crept up to the bathroom door and opened it suddenly to reveal my then eight year old son standing bent over on the vanity closely examining in the mirror the spot on his backside that is used for the exit of all things stinky. I was delighted, he was mortified.
“What are you doing?” I calmly asked.
With a shocked look he replied “Jumping”.
“Jumping?” I repeated “Jumping where?” His reply was pure Ben.
“The tub, I was trying to jump from here to the tub”
It was the best thing he could come up with that sounded reasonable to him. I smiled again and said:
“Stop jumping and get back into the tub, by the way, you know if you put your butt up to the mirror you can get stuck there. It’s like a big suction cup.”
A look of amazement came over him. I wonder if Angie has ever had to clean off strange round 8 year old suction cup sized marks from the mirror.