Sometimes you can live with someone your whole life and still not really know them. You might think you have them pegged – especially if they share DNA – and know exactly what decisions they’ll make in each scenario. But then some random recessive gene will pop up and shock your socks off.
Such has been mine and Noah’s relationship of late.
I have logical children. Degreed as an Engineer and an Accountant, Chris and I have a significant amount of organized, calm, orderly genes in our pool. No, we don’t allow belly flops or dunking.
So when I was changing light bulbs and asked Noah to come take the old one out of my hand, it didn’t occur to me to say “CAREFULLY throw this away.” I mean sure he’s a six year old boy but he’s my six year old boy. And even more extreme, he’s Chris’ six year old boy.
So I just said “Take this and throw it away.”
After which I heard the crash and shatter and skittering pieces of glass in the kitchen.
“What happened??”
“You SAID to throw it!!”
“What?!? You know what ‘throw it away’ means – why would you THROW a lightbulb?”
I shooed both the children out of the kitchen and began angry sweeping.
(Thankfully these were old-fashioned bulbs – no immediately-life-ending poison in these babies.)
After carefully sweeping and then linting my floor (y’all keep dryer lint around to pick up tiny glass fragments too, right?), I followed up with Noah, who was feeling the weight of his sins in the living room. I think my angry sweeping was rightfully emanating throughout the house.
“Why did you throw it?”
“Well, actually I didn’t throw it. I slammed it against the counter to break it before I threw it away.”
“Wait. WHAT?!”
I angry-ran back in the kitchen, Noah leading the way then pointing out shiny objects. Sure enough, the counter was also covered in glass shards.
I spent the day marveling at his ability to surprise me. But then I remembered a couple of weeks ago when I did the same to him…
He and Ali were playing Hide and Seek. He ran into my room, quietly shutting the door behind him. Breathlessly, he said “Don’t tell Ali I’m in here.”
I was busy at work on my computer and nodded busily.
Ali finished counting and eventually popped her head in my door.
“Is Noah in here?”
I didn’t look up and answered as if I was giving her 1% of my attention. “Nope.”
“Okay, thanks.”
She ran downstairs.
Noah slowly rose up from the other side of my bed, starry eyed. With a lot of awe and a tiny bit of fear in his voice, he said,
“Well that…..is amazing. You can lie to kids.”
And he’ll never, ever know how good I am at it.
Can you elaborate on the drier lent thing please? ?
Ha! I guess everyone doesn’t do that. My mother always did this, so I do too: If you save some lint from your dryer and always have it around, it’s the perfect thing to get up any microscopic glass shards. After picking up the larger pieces of glass, just rub the lint over the area and it will pick up any remaining pieces.
Oh the dryer lint… one of the more interesting things I learned about you from my 19 (20 because you needed a round number) things I learned about Rachel when I visited post…. :)
LOL! I would love to know what went through his head to make him think throwing it on the counter was a good idea. And I haven’t heard of the lint trick either but I am going to keep it in mind .
Lol! I love that he didn’t know you could lie to kids. So awesome! And I didn’t know the lint trick until Heather shared it about you in that one guest post!
Sounds like when Chris was six and KATHY took him shopping to buy Joey some shoes. She saw a pair across the aisle and told Chris to throw her that pair. He did and hit her in the face. Did as he was told, must be in the genes.
Bahaha, he probably thought it would be like cracking an egg and all the fun, gooey, bulb guts would ooze out. At least that’s how I imagine my 6y/o boy would have reasoned it.
Ha! I like that visualization.