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Monday, November 3, 2008

What Not to Do

If you were smart..
if you were NOT like me,
this is what you would not do.

You wouldn't assign your two boys the Sunday chore of emptying all the trash cans
into a trash bag, 
putting it into the big can and wheeling it to curb.

You wouldn't realize they hadn't done it until 8 PM,
when it is dark outside.

You wouldn't tell them you don't care,
they have to do it anyway.

You wouldn't take the dog out the back door,
hear their voices laughing and playing,
goofing off
over at the other side of the house.

You wouldn't get an evil gleam in your eye,
snicker quietly to yourself
and go:
"ooooOOOOOOOooooooo"
loudly, like a ghost.

You wouldn't listen to see if you got a reaction.

You wouldn't notice that, after a brief silence,
you could hear their voices again.
You wouldn't decide that you hadn't scared them 
and you wouldn't decide to move closer,
in the dark,
and do it again.

You wouldn't creep along the bushes
to near the front of the house
and say
oooooooOOOOOOOooooooo,
this time even louder.

You would NOT, as you hear your kids begin to race toward the front door,
jump out at them and yell AAAAAGH!
Because that would be JUST WRONG.

You would know that.

Hence, you would not be consumed in guilt and shame
when your older child throws himself at the front door,
ricochets off it because it is closed,
and hunkers down in a little ball, sobbing in fear,
with his hands over his head.

You would not be comforting two screaming, crying boys
who apparently just had the living sh&t scared out of them
by their mother,
who sincerely thought they would know it was me and get the joke
but was instead apparently incredibly, totally, undeniably wrong.

It's a good thing you wouldn't do that.

I'm just sayin'.

10 comments:

Lanny said...

It could be worse. You could have done something similar in college only to realize after you'd done it that your friends had already moved and it was somebody else!

Jennifer Chasse said...

Oh I have done similar things... Kids need a good scare once in awhile.

Anonymous said...

Didn't you know that it is an un-written but implied right of all parents everywhere to occasionally scare the living daylights out of their kids? It keeps them on their toes and can be classified as "character building". That's why I have so much character -- my dad did this kind of thing to my brother and me ALL the freakin' time. :)

Karen MEG said...

OMG, poor them, poor you...

good idea at the time though, moms are allowed to have a sense of humour too.

But you know as a mom, guilt is already a given, right?

Anonymous said...

I wish I had seen it. It sounds so fun

Natalie said...

I thought you were going to say they sprayed you with the hose. Now that would be a bummer!

One time Declan had the hiccups and I tried to scare him to cure the hiccups. I did scare him. So badly he started to cry. And he was still hiccuping.

Lori ~ The Simple Life at Home said...

Wanna bet?

I would TOTALLY do that. That's so funny that they bought it - my kids probably would have figured out it was me. I love this story!!

Gina said...

I would do that! But my kids are so jaded they would probably throw garbage at me.

Oh my.. word verification is BRATFOR.

Anonymous said...

Good thing I didn't wait with my dh for my kids to come out of their grandmother's house last night while hiding behind the garage. Good thing I didn't wait for them to turn around before we snuck up behind them and grabbed them. Good thing they didn't scream their little heads off.

Not that you had anything to do with that.

Hohni said...

Now that IS funny!!!