I’ve been looking back ten years on my blog, both to make sure posts are free of typos and because it’s incredibly fun to have a specific, written, relentless accounting of your life covering every single day.
Homework for Life is the best way to do this, of course, and I do this, too. But writing a posting to a blog every day for more than 20 years has been a gift to myself, and sometimes, my family, too.
Here’s a moment from November 2015 that I will never forget, but thanks to what I wrote that day, the details are now back in my mind and heart, and I remember it like it happened yesterday.
Thank goodness.
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My kids and I have been playing Monster. It’s a game I played with my brothers and sister when we were young, and one our father played with us before the divorce forced him from our home.
In the game, I am the monster. I chase my kids. That’s essentially it, though Clara and Charlie have recently begun adding twists to the game.
They each have a ball that they can throw at me, which, according to them, should make me stop if they hit me.
They have declared the area in the living room “the Monster’s lair” even though I didn’t ask for a lair.
They use flashlights to blind me.
They bury me in pillows and declare me captured.
Last week, they added booby traps to the game. I have no idea where they learned this word.
Essentially, they plan traps for me. They put pillows on the floor, hoping that I would trip on them and fall. They reposition furniture in hopes that I won’t notice the chair or couch and will run into it and fall down. They use paper, scissors, and tape to make nets and snares.
They don’t keep the preparation of these booby traps a secret. I hear them plotting in the other room, mostly because they are incapable of whispering. Sometimes they will tell me to stay away until their booby trap is ready. I am never surprised by what they have planned.
Until yesterday.
I heard them plotting a booby trap in the living room, so I waited in the kitchen, giving them time to finish whatever devious plan they had in mind. When they got quiet, I knew it was time. I ran around the corner, roaring and screaming, arms flailing, and found them both standing in the middle of the room, completely naked.
“Naked booby trap!” they screamed and ran towards me. Like any good father who wants to positively reinforce his children’s creativity (and because I was honestly so surprised that I was a little frightened), I ran away, chased by two small, naked children.
Naked booby traps. Who knew?
If only I could get my wife to set a naked booby trap for me.
