An Afternoon of Education

What is the one thing you don't want to give a group of rabid boys that are in the perfect setting for a re-creation of Lord of the Flies?

You guessed it, anonymity. That is apparently why our first craft after lunch was to make knight helmets out of cardboard paper. They offered the authentic look of an ancient knight of yore and even came with the eye slits that removed any chance of a clear field of vision with none of the durability of a real helmet. Add in an unlimited supply of sticks and it was the perfect craft. They finished off this lesson with leather working. The idea was to use a mold to create a decorative necklace or name tag. Once the boys got their hands on the hammers, that changed to using a mold to beat the heck out of an innocent piece of leather.

If five boys pee on a bush, even though the bathroom is a mere twenty feet away, and they are being supervised by four fathers who spent the night on cots that have no support, will anyone yell at them?

This is an easy one. No mothers were near were enough to interfere with nature. They made a perfectly straight line with their backs to us. I think the only problem was us fathers knew that we had to walk all the way to bathroom. So, the only protest was our envy. (We also followed the unwritten rule that what happens at camp stays at camp. There were a few mothers that took offense to boys being boys. One mother even went so far as to explain how one year, she woke up and a boy was peeing a mere “ten feet from her head.” This lead to several comments from the men about close only counting in hand grenades. I added, since BB guns and archery were already on the schedule for the afternoon, a section for hand grenades sounded like fun. All the kids would be pretty much guaranteed of getting a bull's eye. I even knew the counselor that could lead it. It was the same one that taught my son the song about announcements. (That song has been my constant companion for the past week. Added to the fact that he could not make a decent pot of coffee and I would volunteer to throw the first grenade at him...))

What year was the BB gun invented?

This was a real question the counselor at the BB gun range asked. “I'll give you a hint, it was a really long time ago,” he added.

“1993?” one of the kids in our group suggested.

“That was a year before I was born. The BB gun was invented long before that.

I don't know what was more aggravating, that the kids thought 1993 was a long, long, long time ago or that I'd graduated college, been married and had at least five jobs before the counselor teaching my son how to shoot a BB gun was even born.

It turns out, that the BB gun was invented and used for Lewis and Clark's trip. The fact that it was silent when it was shot impressed and scared the Indians. (The fact that they were teaching a bunch of wild, barely tamed kids how to use a silent weapon was not very calming, from a parental point of view.)

What is the square knot used for?

(To join two ropes together) This was more along the lines of a foolish question. I understand that knot tying has a long and celebrated history in the Boy Scouts. However, when you have a group of boys that outnumber the parents, and you give them helmets and teach them how to shoot guns, adding how to quickly tie up your potential victims is just not a good idea.

There was five hours until lights out. I'm pretty sure, the announcement, “Time to brush your teeth!” was going to have a much different result tonight. Luckily, I made a helmet too.

Tooth Fairy

I live with morons.

My daughter finally lost her first front tooth. This tooth took a while to go from loose to out. For the past three weeks, I'd check and be told that it had not fallen out yet. I suggested a hammer to help it come out, but that was nixed before I could find a hammer. It took a group of excited Brownies and my wife's elbow to finally get it out. Apparently my daughter was a little distracted as they learned about the Ruffed Grouse and my wife's elbow didn't check for right of way.

A few gallons of blood later, my daughter arrived home to tell me all about her first Brownies meeting. It might have been a bit mean of me to keep asking, is it grouse or grouth? After the tenth time, it was still funny...

I did my fatherly duty and made sure the tooth was placed in a plastic sandwich bag so it would not be lost (After going through my son's fifty teeth, this was a common habit. (This is important in a bit...)) The tooth fairy made it's stumbling and grumbling way into her room much later that night and swapped the tooth for cash. The grumbling was because I didn't plan ahead. For well over six years, my daughter has fallen asleep in every position imaginable (and many unimaginable). The one thing in common was her pillow never figured into those positions. So, when I tucked her tooth (in it's plastic bag) under her pillow I figured the swap would be easy. This night, she was plastered over her pillow. The middle of the night is not the time to silently sneak a tooth from under a six year old anticipating a visit from the tooth fairy.

I was a bit surprised the next day when I got a teary-eyed call on my way home. (This is where the moron-ness starts) Her other tooth came out at school! (actually it was shhool) and she lost her toof. After some intense patience on my part, I gleaned the whole story. The nurse had put her tooth in a special necklace for her to bring home. My daughter, being MY daughter, had to check out her toof... several times. Unfortunately, one of these times was on the shhool bus as she was getting off. Someone bumped her and her toof was lost! Gone forever.

I assured my distraught daughter that I would look for it when I got home and was pretty sure I'd be able to find it.

“How can you find it? It's gone!”

“I have special daddy skills.” (Those skills stemmed from my son when he lost his second tooth and couldn't find it. I found this out at bed time. My suggestion that I could pull another tooth wasn't too well received. So began project “Distraction.” My wife read his stories while I searched. Believe it or not, very few household items look enough like a bottom tooth to fool a tired child. I had a brainstorm when I came across the first tooth he'd lost. This met all the requirements... It was tooth shaped and it was handy.

“Where did you find it?” He instantly perked up.

I rolled my eyes to cover a small bit of information I'd forgotten to gather. In the initial panic, I neglected to ask where he was when he lost it. “Where do you think I found it? Right where you lost it.”

The nice thing about children is they are so trusting. “You mean you found it in the family room? I looked all over. How did you find it?”

“I was just lucky.”

Ever since, that tooth has been in the top drawer of my dresser. It's gotten us through at least 4 teeth that were lost and never made it home.)

Shortly after I got home, the search began for my daughter's newly lost tooth. Against all odds, the tooth was found. (The impressive part was that I still remembered where I'd stored the fallback tooth.)

“Is this the tooth you lost?”

“Where did you find it?” She carefully took the tooth from my hand.

“It must have fallen into a pocket on your backpack.”

Then, I started to worry. This WAS my daughter and she was looking at the tooth far too intensely. There was doubt. And the only other tooth I had on hand was a front tooth.

“That's my toof?”

“Yes. Don't they look weird when they fall out?” Ok, there might have been a bit of hysteria in my voice. I snatched the tooth from her hand. “I'll put this on my dresser. We'll put it under your pillow tonight.”

That night, my daughter made sure she had the tooth when my wife put her to bed. I made a quick check so I knew where the tooth and bag were. But, there was no plastic bag.

“Where's your tooth?”

“Under my pillow!”

"I don't feel it. Are you sure?”

My daughter picked up her pillow and pointed at her tooth. There were just three little problems. The tooth was white. Her sheet was white. The tooth was not in a plastic bag.

Her mother got a very strong talking to about night vision, stumbling and finding a white tooth the size of a grain of sand. She didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation. I think the exact words were, “Ok. I'm going back to sleep.”

The tooth fairy definitely needs better support staff.

Some Assembly Required

“They say it should only take a day to put together.” Those were my wife's words after she returned with the bunk bed.

There are two things wrong with that sentence. Who are they? And what kind of sadistic engineer would design something that would take an entire day to assemble? What kind of mother would torture her eight year-old son with a brand new bunk bed when there was no chance it would be ready that day? (I have a feeling this will weigh heavily against her when it comes time to put her into a home. I'll already be in a home from sled riding, bunk bed building and falling down stairs.)

So, three large boxes were in the back of her minivan. My son had somehow cracked the code, “Your son's bunk b. is here.” After working to three AM, all I wanted was coffee. Somehow, my mumbled growl was interpreted as, “Of course, dear, I'll happily lug all three boxes up two flights of stairs and get started right away putting it together. Why don't you leave our two spawn here to help me while you go shopping in peace.”

“I want a bunk bed for MY birthday.” My daughter, almost-five-years-old-going-on-30, has no business being able to pack that much persecuted guilt in such a short sentence. Her lower lip quivered with just the right amount of emotion. A tear even threatened to slide down her cheek.

Luckily, I'd had enough coffee so my answer was censured into another mumble.

“Is the box heavy, dad?” My son asked that as I inched the first box up the steps.

“No, my back usually makes these popping sounds.”

Apparently, my sarcasm was lost on him as he suggested I use my legs more.

Once I had the two main boxes up to his room, my two helpers were all ready for me to start. We did the normal safety lecture. “No touching the sharp tools. Be careful with the heavy pieces. If you don't understand the word(s) daddy yells, don't tell mom. If you do understand the word(s) daddy yells, make sure she knows you didn't learned them from me.” I got two sets of grave nods that they understood the rules and would obey them to the best of their ability, or until they forgot, whichever came first.

Now, at five and eight, my kids have normal attention spans (3 minutes, unless a cartoon character is being splattered, then its measured in hours.), so I figured my next step would buy me at least another cup of coffee. “Let's find the directions.” Anything that required 2 boxes that could easily hold a small car, had to require a serious collection of tools. The directions were quickly located. I knew it was going to be a long afternoon when I saw that the directions were only a few pages long. My daughter proudly displayed the bags of bolts and screws.

“Now we're cooking,” my son rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist.

“I still need to get all the tools together to build it,” I reminded him. I might even be able to squeeze a nap out of that. There was space under the workbench and a box of nails that would work as a pillow in a pinch.

“These tools?” My son held up one of the packages. There was wrench and two allen wrenches.

“I'm sure we'll need more tools.” All right, there might have been a hint of desperation in my voice.

“No. It says this is all you need,” he said as he read the directions spread out on the floor in front of him.

When I was growing up, there were certain things you count on public education for. (Besides ending a sentence with a preposition.) We didn't know geography, math was iffy and I'm pretty sure reading was frowned upon. Starting on Monday, I am putting him in a private school.

In fairly short order, including three words they had better never use around their mother (For the direction makers out there, when it's vitally important which side goes down on the first piece, but that vitality won't be apparent until several hundred bolts later, you might want to STRESS that.) the bunk bed was together and in place. One hernia later, his mattress (His mother had decided that he needed a special mattress a year or two ago. I think it was made with lead.) was up on the top bunk and all was ready.

He and his sister made several trips up and down the ladder and pronounced my work satisfactory. (In case you are wondering, I was fully aware that the one day to put together comment was an outright manipulation. But it makes her feel like she's helping...)

That night, we read his stories in the lower bunk. The interesting thing is, after lugging the boxes up to his room and lifting his mattress up, my back was in the perfect permanent curve to get into the top bunk, I just didn't think I'd be able to move once there. After finishing his books, my son, the fruit of my loins, climbed to his top bunk, gather his pillows and blankets and dropped them over the edge. While I watched, he climbed back down.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked as he picked up his pillows.

“I'm going to sleep down here.”

“You're not going to sleep on the top bunk?”

“I'll sleep on the top bunk on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

While I'm pretty sure public education gave me some ideas on how to drive my parents crazy, I know they didn't teach Rationalizing Logic until I was at least in junior high school.

Almost There

6:15 p.m.

We were close to three weeks into our road trip. (You travel with two kids that can barely wait to get to the cabin so they can get out their sleeping bags and blow up beds and tell me each hour doesn't feel like at least a day.) We all needed a break and there was a Waffle House coming up. In hindsight, loading them up on syrup at that time of night might not have been the wisest option.

We pulled into the parking lot and I freed my daughter from the 3000 point safety harness. For the record, I did notice that she was soaked. I thought it was from the effort of getting out of the Government Regulated Safety Seat. Besides, the bottle of water I'd given her earlier hadn't been that full. We almost made it into the restaurant, but her mother discovered the soaked clothes and decided there would be a Change.

That was when we ran into the packing issue. The Change had not been packed in the essentials bag. They were in the depths of the roof bag. And the roof bag was held down by straps that I had serious doubts I'd be able to loosen. With the grumpy whining motivating me, I managed to loosen the straps. Since I'd packed the roof bag, I had a pretty good idea where my daughter's clothes were and dug out a shirt and pair of shorts. I displayed my find proudly, sure the whining would stop. But, I was told they didn't match in a very grumpy voice.

I appealed to my daughter, and even though I got her seal of approval, my wife still wasn't happy. I was banished to child watching while my wife found a matching set of clothes. (In hindsight, I can see the importance of my daughter wearing clothes that match. We were in a small town, that we would never be in again, she was about to eat dinner (read pretty much any article in my blog and you'll figure out that food and my daughter means a mess), we were going to spend the next couple of hours in the car and would arrive at the campground well after dark and put the kids right to bed. Being seen in a mismatched shirt would undoubtedly traumatize her for life.)

After dinner, we hit the road again for the final leg of the trek. I was allowed back behind the wheel. I honestly don't know what time we got the cabin. I just remember that it was raining. And it was dark. And everyone was tired. We had a small cabin that first night and would move to a “family” cabin the next day. Since we were just going to sleep, I figured the small room would be fine.

That was before I carried the roof bag through the primeval rain forest that separated the parting lot from the cabin. Both kids immediately dug in looking for their sleeping bags and blow up mattresses. I didn't quite catch the fact that my wife had bought a different mattress for each child. All I looked at was the first box to make sure it had a pump.

Immediately after opening the first one, I made a note to verify that the pumps always have a plug. The one she'd bought used batteries. Even though I already knew the answer, I asked anyway, “Honey, do we have AA batteries?”

While she cursed and looked through her bag, I opened the other mattress, glad that it was a different type. Maybe it had a plug? The night was not a total loss yet. (Both kids had already spread their sleeping bags on the floor and were jumping up and down on the bed, positive that they were not tired.) I was right. This one didn't require batteries! That's because it didn't have a pump at all. You actually had to blow it up. It must have been the last one manufactured in the work and my wife bought it.

I tried telling the kids how soft and comfortable the floor looked in the vain hope they'd say, “Why father, there's no need for you to venture out into the rainy and dark night. We would be happy to camp out on the floor.”

Instead, I walked to the main lodge. Surely, they'd have the batteries and we'd back on track to a peaceful evening. I was right. They did have them. About two days ago they had them. The nearest store was a half-hour drive away and I had three tired and cranky people waiting back at the cabin.

Ok... I did consider going to get the batteries, and taking the scenic route. In case you are wondering, it is possible to blow up an air mattress. It took two aneurisms, a mild heart attack and I'm pretty sure my left eye was bleeding by the time I was done.

With the mattress blown up, the kids each on their half and fighting sleep, I told them a story. (The bag with their books was still in the back of the Prius and even though the rain had slowed, I was too lightheaded to risk the walk to the car.) I don't remember the moral of the story, but they were both silent and wide-eyed when I was done.

11:15 PM.

We'd arrived, everyone survived the trip. The veins in my temples weren't throbbing as much. Vacation officially starts tomorrow-- Hold on... “I don't want to hear any more complaining. It's time for you to sleep.. You've been whining all day. And kids, stop teasing your mother!”

Sarcasm

“No, daddy was bored and decided to fall down the stairs to see if it was fun. It wasn’t.”

That’s what my son told my daughter the other night as we went upstairs for bedtime. The statement was prompted by my daughter trying to grab the cane that was steadying me as I limped upstairs. She was grabbing it because it was her horsey that she rode around the house when she and my son played cowboys.

I was limping because I’d spent the day curled into a ball of whimpering snot-filled miserabilty. (Yeah, go ahead and look that word up. I have a critique partner for my fiction that is constantly telling me, “Jack, you can’t just make up words and ignore the rules of grammar!” I tell her it is creative license and sets the mood. She usually has some sarcastic comment about it pulled her out of the story. Being a mature writer, completely open to all constructive criticism, I usually respond, “That’s cause your stupid.”) I’d stayed home with the plan of either sleeping until I felt better or they buried me. (It has been suggested that I might be a little melodramatic when it comes to being sick, mornings, work, growing older or pain. To those suggestions, see my usual response.)

Eventually I woke to my stomach growling. I remembered the age-old phrase, “Feed a cold, starve a fever. (That may be backwards, but I was hungry and it gave me the motivation to crawl out of bed.) Between bed and food was a flight of stairs. I remember most of the steps. I even remember seeing the floor. What I don’t remember is levitating several dozen feet into the air. I know it was at least that high cause I have no problem remembering the landing.

My first thought was, Well… there goes the hip. (At my age, hips, gray hair and soft foods gain importance.) I had visions of my wife arriving home with the kids to find me broken and maimed at the bottom of the steps. Fortunately, nothing was broken and with a few groans I made it to the kitchen and made my lunch, chips and salsa.

So, why did my son tell my daughter that I was bored and decided to fall down the stairs? (You gotta admit, that was a pretty good hook.) Well, that morning I’d promised him that we could build when he got home. For the past year he’s been into the Transformers. Of course we bought him the required toys. (However, I did not have the required doctorate in Advanced Particle Engineering and only thing I could figure out how to transform it into was a truck. Since it came as a truck, it was rather anti-climatic.) My son, being patient and understanding, took matters into his own hands. While I was grumbling and cursing, he came back with his own version. He’d used his Legos to make his own version of a Bumble Bee. (That’s an Autobot. They are the good guys. By now I know all the Autobots and Decepticons and each one’s abilities.) We looked online and went though all the different ones. He’d spend a few minutes studying the picture, then come back with his version. He now has his own shrine. A corner of his room is carefully organized with blocks (that he stole from his sister) and each transformer is placed on its own block.

That was our plan for when he got home from school. We were going to build Transformers. “Daddy, don’t you want to build with me?” (He learned the whole guilt thing from his mother. I’d say his mother’s mother, but we might need her to baby sit again.)

“Of course, buddy, just give me a few minutes to get down to the floor.”

“Daddy fell down the steps and hurt himself today,” my wife added helpfully.

I didn’t want to burden my family with pain and agony from my fall or worry him, so I had barely mentioned it passing to my wife when she got home. (broken hips, no more stairs, delirium and agony.) My son looked at me with grave concern. I nodded. “Yes, I fell down the stairs and hurt my hip and elbow.” I even showed him the beginning bruise on my elbow.

He thought before he asked, “Why did you fall down the stairs?”

“I was bored and thought it would be fun. It wasn’t.” For a six year-old, that was a perfectly sensible explanation and we went back to building and crashing his Transformers.

I’m just waiting for the next time one of the grandparents falls. “My daddy could have told you it wasn’t fun. You should have asked him.” The problem is, he’s figured out how to perfectly mimic my deadpan-tone, but doesn’t know to wink as he says it. At least he’ll be able to outrun them if they land on their hip.

The $%$#$*&$ Threes

I’d heard about the Terrible Twos and survived both kids going through them. (And in case you wondering, the kids survived too.) Our son skipped that stage and lulled us into a false sense of confidence. I’ve come up with a groundbreaking thesis that the Terrible Twos is not based on age, but is genetically triggered. I’m sure that once this gets out, I’ll have several government grants to study it further. Until then, I’ll continue my practice of not letting facts and details influence my opinion.

You may be wondering why I say the Terrible Twos is genetically triggered. Look at how many families have more than one child. In our case, my wife and I had that fateful discussion one day. We saw how well behaved our son was. After the horror stories we’d heard and read about (Look at how many books Mr. Spock has written. If there wasn’t something terribly wrong with children as a species, I don’t think he would have sold nearly as many books, even with the help of Star Trek fame.) we understood that our genes (at least mine) needed to be passed along even more. He was well past his two-year mark and he wasn’t having the hourly temper tantrums. I hadn’t noticed his head spinning around at odd hours or him speaking in demonic voices. Yes, he was The Ideal Child, the one that mankind had been waiting for.

So, my wife said those fateful words one day…”Let’s have another.” Being a male, I naturally agreed.

Now that I look back, I don’t have any definite proof, but I’m positive that at the moment of conception, my son entered the Terrible Twos. Our innocent angel became the little monster I’d read about. This proves my point. If he’d entered the Terrible Twos when he turned two, like everyone warned us about, we would never have considered another ticking time bomb.

Now, you may be wondering how I survived my wife being pregnant and my son feeling his oats. Well, I’m sure you’d get the same answer from the people that run the lunatic asylum. Once you are used to dealing with one whacko, adding another isn’t too bad. Luckily for our sanity, shortly after our daughter was born, we decided to sell our house in Virginia and move to Pennsylvania.

The whole process, deciding to move, getting the house in order, packing, moving and unpacking took a little over six months. This is important because it was right after my son turned three. So while, again, we’d had the warning about the stages following the Terrible Twos, he had so many things going on that he never really settled into a “stage” after two.

This is important because this past weekend, my daughter came down with, this is in no way an exaggeration, The Plague from Hell. In three years, she’d never had a problem taking any kind of medicine. (For that matter, food and drink is her favorite past time. This is the same girl that brazenly dips fresh strawberries in mustard and honestly declares the combination is delicious. My son, on the other hand, makes a picky eater look like a glutton.) I was not concerned when it came time for bed. We had cough medicine for her and I knew she’d take it and sleep through the night. So, while my wife fretted and fussed, I was my normal calm and collected self.

I got her in her PJs and ready for bed while my wife hovered, sure that her daughter was in mortal danger and of coughing up a lung. Once she was ready for bed, I carefully measure out the proper dose of cough syrup. My daughter looked up at me with watery eyes, the bags making them soulful. “Do you want some medicine?” I asked

She gave a weak nod, probably using the last reserves of her energy. (She learned how to milk being sick from me.) I handed her the little container and told her to shoot it. I even had a cup of apple juice ready to wash the taste out of her mouth.

Now, this is nothing new. Whenever she takes medicine, I tell her to shoot it, she downs it in one swallow and we’re done. Why would this night be any different? Because she’s my daughter, that’s why.

She drank the cough syrup and then promptly spit it and dinner up. At least the cold hadn’t affected her appetite earlier…

What does this have to do with her being three? I spent the weekend up every couple of hours as she woke up coughing and crying. She was a pathetic sight, laying in her bed, her stuffed animals, dolls, books and whatever else a little girl needs, surrounding her, while she sniffled and cried. I tried more cough medicine, but the answer was always the same, “Too yucky.”

How did we survive? Purple. Some genius made a purple cough syrup and she reluctantly agreed that her favorite color would not let her down. Sunday night, she slept through the night without waking up. Unfortunately, I now had her cold…

Green Eggs and Ham

“Sam I am!” My daughter, at 3 has learned the final line by heart and knows most of the rest by now. I usually try to give my wife a break after dinner and read our children their bedtime stories.

When our son was born, I did the nighttime routine with him (except for the bath. I didn’t have the required doctorate in Babies and Water, so I wasn’t allowed near the bathroom during that time. However, the one night our son had a high fever I was the one that got to sit in the cold bathtub with him while my wife called the doctor, emergency room, her mother and Dr. Sears.) That meant swaddling and giving him his nighttime bottle. This was our bonding time.

Eventually the bottle changed to a cup of milk and crackers while I read him two stories. It had to be two stories, not one long book or three short books—two! Anything else and his little world was thrown into chaos. Now, you might be thinking that is a sign of future problems. Both sets of grandparents thought the same thing and delicately brought up that he needed to be evaluated. But this is my son. While he can be a little OCD about his Hot Wheels cars, the two books, when you add in my wife’s genes and mine, made perfect sense.

One book meant he was going to bed too early, because two is obviously more than one. But… he knew if he pushed it to three, he was skating on thin ice, especially after I’d had a bad day at work. So two was safe, and if he picked out thick ones, he could push the limit even further.

When our daughter graced us with her presence, I did her nighttime routine also. We moved from Washington, DC to Pennsylvania shortly after she was born. My daughter and I spent many a relaxing evening next to the fire, watching TV while she had her bottle(s). At least that was the plan. Usually, she’d wake up halfway through the bottle and decide that her tiny fingers needed to see how pliable my eyes were.

We had a nice routine for a while. Both the children would take their baths/showers then I’d separate my daughter from the pile of energy that raced around the house, wrestle her into her pajamas (I only made the mistake of telling her one time that she was getting her brother’s old pajamas. The, “They too big for me!” left no doubt what her opinion on the matter was.) and take her downstairs to rock. When she outgrew her bottle (an executive decision my wife and I made after she unscrewed the lid and poured the contents out) I decided it was time for her to join her brother during story time.

To make it fair, she picked one book and her brother picked another book. Since they are both adorers of Thomas the Train, we were guaranteed a book that took us to the isle of Sodor. The other book was usually a Dr. Seuss.

As a writer and teacher, I’ve always admired Dr. Seuss. He wrote books to help children learn through repetition of small recognizable words. And then managed to rhyme each sentence (no small feat but made somewhat easier by his knack of making up words.) As a father, who’d spent the day working on computers or teaching people and was drained, I’ve always carried an undying hatred for him. Getting my mouth to form those made up words and my eyes to focus on them in the early evening is a stretch. That is, until I found Green Eggs and Ham.

Pure and simple, this work should go down in history along side War and Peace. While it may not address the same social, economic and political issues that Tolstoy covered, it has saved my sanity. I know the words by heart and… every single word in the book is a… word! Fifty plus pages of rhymes with words that I knew.

After the first thirty or forty times of reading it, I sensed that my children were losing interest in the storyline. Now, I could have just let it go and moved on to another book, but I was still looking forward to our nightly reading. Our children are complete opposites when it comes to eating. Our daughter will eat anything (including strawberries dipped in mustard) and our son would make a picky eater jealous. So, thinking quick one night as both kids began wandering away when I reached for Green Eggs and Ham, I shouted, after the first refrain of, “I do not like Green eggs and Ham,” “Do you like green eggs and ham?” My daughter looked and me and shook her head, “No.” My son followed with “No!”

We had common ground now. I lead them both through the refrains, each time louder until the house shook with their screams of, “No, I do not like green eggs and ham!” (Yes, my wife also pointed out that getting them that riled up right before bed was not the brightest move I’ve made).

We finished with the revelation that green eggs and ham are good. I had no doubt my daughter would agree (remember the strawberries). I was shocked when my son answered, yes, he does like green eggs and ham. I was even more surprised when the next night at dinner, he did his normal balking at trying something new, until I brought up green eggs and ham. He tried the new dish. When I asked him how it was, he answered, “Not too terrible.”

Well… you can’t win all the time.