I fully expect that someday my twins will co-author a book entitled How To Annoy Your Parents: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Here is one potential anecdote, starring my six-year-old son, William.
The sun is shining. I am doing something productive in the kitchen, like checking Facebook for messages from people who spoke two words to me in junior high.
William and Vivian are outside, splashing in the kiddie pool. After five minutes of this, they’re bored. So they experiment. Will drags the garden hose into the pool and creates a miniature version of the fountain at Caesar’s Palace.
No problems yet. Well, none besides watering my windows, the neighbourhood cat, a passing car.
In fact, as far as I’m concerned, there are no problems at all.
Fast forward to the next day.
From downstairs, I hear my husband yell, “Can you come here? It’s serious.”
I bound down the stairs and find my husband in the bathroom. The exhaust fan is hanging down, there’s water dripping from it, my husband is soaked, and the floor is a lake.
I stare, dumbfounded.
“What the hell’s this?” he asks.
“Maybe the kitchen sink leaked,” I say. “It’s right above.” I bound back up the stairs, doubling my daily exercise quota, and inspect the sink pipes. No leak.
Then I stop. What’s on the outside wall? I wonder.
I run outside and see the hose lying next to the outdoor exhaust vent that goes – you guessed it – to the basement bathroom.
“William!” I scream as I run back into the house. He’s playing Hot Wheels versus dinosaurs.
I assume my good-cop face, the kind that encourages kids to confess.
“Yesterday, ” I pause, catching my breath, “did you put the hose in the vent hole outside?”
“Yes,” he says, slamming stegosaurus into a pick-up truck.
“Did you turn the water on?” As if I really need to ask.
“I think so.” Steggie is performing some mock-wrestling move on the toy.
“Okay, then. You know that’s not a good idea, don’t you?” Clearly, disciplining is not a strength when I’m on holidays from teaching.
“Sorry, Mom. I won’t do it again.”
And he likely won’t do that again. But he will find something else to do that’ll annoy us. Because annoying your parents is a kid’s job.
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Any ways your kids have annoyed you this summer? Or ways you annoyed your parents?
I truly have no words. Wow.
I didn’t even recognize it as a blogging moment till later…much later…
I love it – I’m sure there’s many times my mother had to clench her teeth during my childhood. Actually to think of it, she did tell me one time that she used to punch her pillows out of frustration.
Hmm..
Punching pillows = a strategy I’m now going to add to my anger management. After the wine. Before the crying.
Yikes! That IS a good one. I interviewed a mom of twins once who told me that hers poured bucket of water in her walk-in closet. Why? They wanted to make a swimming pool. My twins (now 14) would fish out all sorts of dangerous things from the trash (like broken glass) and create “games.” Crazy!
The indoor swimming pool idea made me laugh. Easier to laugh when it happens to someone else!
Also hose-related: Begging to go through the sprinkler, and then actually playing in it for all of 5 minutes.
Actually any time my children go outside because they want to and then decide to go to my in-laws’ house (which is right next door) instead. Probably in the hopes of getting a treat and/or getting to watch TV. Drives me bonkers.
Your in-laws live next door? Sounds like a dream. I’d just let the kids go over there all the time, which likely explains why my in-laws live 3 hours away.
I will tell you the story of our most difficult to clean up annoyance from the past because teenagers are so annoying I don’t want to talk about it. When she was 4 my middle daughter thought it would be interesting to rip open half a bag of her sisters Pull Ups to get to the stuff inside and see what would happen if she put it all in the full bathtub.
Yeah that was fun!
OMG. Was it really absorbent?
Aren’t 6 year olds fun? I am, in fact, having time to write this because my son is in time-out…for screaming at me for 10 minutes because I dared to want to take him to Target to get him new underwear. Yes, I know, I’m a terrible mom……
The underwear curse….hilarious (again, when it’s not my kid). Sometimes I put myself in time out, but one of twins usually joins me.
When introduced to one of my most important clients, Lief came up with this: “Oh, you’re THAT guy.” Then whispered theatrically to me: “You said he had a little pointy tail.”
Lief is funny. In a mortifying way, but funny. Thanks for commenting!