I had something to say

I'm at a stage of sleep deprivation where the train of my thought will frequently skip the tracks, and I utterly forget what I was thinking about, what I wanted to say, who I wanted to share the thought with, everything. This has happened just now.

Instead of my no doubt important musings on the Democrats in Denver, or the shocking state of the roads in Annapolis, I'll relate a strange story about kid #1.

Now that he is a big kid and has a demanding demon-seed of a little sister, kid #1 has been tasked to clean his body and brush his teeth without supervision. So tonight after dinner, as the demon seed is wailing and the man has escaped outside to take out the trash (strange how such zeal for chores has taken over, when they are outside chores that are out of earshot of the seed), I asked him to get ready for bed. I'm usually pretty specific so steps don't get skipped, so the instructions go like this: go upstairs and take off your clothes, turn on the shower and get in, wash your body until it is clean, then dry off and put on your pajamas. But tonight I just told him to go take a shower and brush his teeth.

He went upstairs, and I managed to get the seed to quiet down so I could listen to what he was doing and watch Jim Lehrer at the same time. I heard water running, and assumed it was for teeth. Then I heard the shower and was sure all tasks were accomplished. He came back downstairs dressed for bed and assured me he had taken a shower when I asked him. At this point, a memory from childhood intruded. Time was, I hated to get clean. I would go when told and turn on the shower, but I wouldn't get in. Something about getting wet skeeved me out. My relatives eventually got hip to this (perhaps the stink? or the very dirty feet?), and would start touching my hair or asking really detailed questions about what I had done in the bathroom. Is your washcloth wet? Is your hair wet? Is the bar of soap wet? So in self-defense, I would wet the washcloth, run wet hands through my hair, and make sure some water touched the soap. It got to the point where my showers were supervised to make sure that the majority of my body actually came into contact with soap and water. The final evolution of this ridiculousness was the dry wash, when I would scrub my body with a wet washcloth and soap while standing at the sink, with the shower running so they could hear. That way I could answer all of their questions honestly, without having to submit to the horror of getting into the shower.

So of course tonight, when kid #1 assured me he was clean, some little warning bell in the back of my mind rang. Perhaps it was the shifty look in his eyes, or the disgusting crescents of dirt under every finger and toe nail, but I suspected he hadn't actually gotten into the shower. His hair was dry. His skin was dry. There was no fresh scent. I asked him again, and the kid had the temerity to tell me he had taken the shower. This is serious nerve. I had to explain to him that if his flesh is dry and dirty, and his washcloth and towel are bone dry, then the odds are that he didn't get into the shower. So for attempt number 2, I watched him get in and start scrubbing (with soap that I applied to the washcloth).

This is a very happy day for me. To all appearances, this child belongs to his father. My stamp doesn't appear in his face, except for tint. To find now that he may have inherited something from me after all is incredibly exciting. Maybe next I'll find him lost in a good book (every hour, every day), aggressively hogging the chocolate, or developing new stragems for keeping the change. I eagerly await developments tomorrow, when I'm hoping that he remembers to get the washcloth wet before coming downstairs to lie about getting clean. It would be entertaining if he thought up some new twists in this game.