Alyce's Black Eye

Alyce woke up with a black eye. She had bumped her cheek on her dresser the night before and didn’t think anything of it. She woke up and it was bruised. While eating breakfast before church, she started writing on a Post-It note. Then smirking, she stuck it on her chest. It said, “My parents did this to me.” Very funny. We had a little talk about Child Protective Services.

Claire Learns a Bad Word

Today after dinner, Derek and I were laying next to each other on our stomachs on the floor of the family room. The kids were crawling, walking, jumping, rolling, sliding, laying, and straddling all over our backs. As we were groaning, moaning, and grunting, Quincy told us that some kids had made fun of him, calling him a scaredy cat because he got scared at the Spook Alley at school. We asked him what he did and he said he told them, “Please don’t say that anymore.” They kept doing it, so he said again, “Please don’t say that anymore.” They still did it, so he told on them and that took care of it. We praised him for doing the right thing and for being so polite and level-headed about it, then started joking about what he could’ve said to them. I told him he should’ve said, “I’m a blue belt in karate. Stop making fun of me.” Derek mumbled more to me than anyone else, thinking the kids wouldn’t hear, “Just tell them to stop or you’ll kick their ass.” Quincy asked, “Or you’ll what?” Claire said, “Kick their ass.” Quincy said, “What?” Claire said louder, “Kick their ass.” Derek and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t stop them. I’ll let Derek explain that one to the teachers.

Child Humor

Here’s the kind of humor I have to listen to every day. Quincy’s joke: If you’re chewing gum and you’re a mummy, you should say, “I’m a gummy mummy.” After a while, this kind of humor starts to become funny. And then you start thinking in this kind of humor. And then your friends stop calling you. And then you realize that you also laugh at “Maggie and the Ferocious Beast.” And then you start craving kids’ meals. And then you start spending more and more time playing matching games on your iPhone…on Level 1. It’s just a downward spiral from there.

Sugar as a Drug

I sometimes wonder how things would change if we viewed sugar intake as a substance abuse problem. We would suddenly hide all of our candy and cookies so they weren’t in public view, and we would sneak a piece here and there when life got too hard to handle. There would be a special aisle at the grocery store, or rather a section, since the amount of sugar products would exceed an aisle. You would have to have proper identification to enter and there would be armed cops standing by the door. Halloween would become a bunch of Speak Easys and parents would never admit to each other that they were taking their kids trick-or-treating. All the righteous Latter-Day Saints who obeyed the prophet and built up their food storage would turn into Drug Lords, doling out their sugar to the highest bidder.

Halloween

Whoever invented Halloween should be shot. It was definitely NOT a mother of small children who turn into Gremlins when given sugar. It was probably some sweet old Grandma who thought it would be nice to give a few of her neighbor children a treat so they wouldn’t be so frightened of all the scary decorations. I’m sure she invited them to ring her doorbell in their costumes and in return she would give them a sweet treat. The tradition probably caught on amongst her Old Farts Group, and Halloween was born. Well, Sweet Treat this, Granny!