Eggs

When my second son was 4, he used to get into the refridgerator and take out food at night, too. Shortly into summer that year, I came home from work to find my (now ex-) husband returning food to the kitchen, and throwing stuff away. I naturally asked what he was doing, and he showed me what he had, and said he had found it all under the second son's bed. A peanut butter jar (sans lid), a loaf of bread (opened), a bottle full of apple juice for the baby (half-full), a 7-up can (unopened, thank God!), a bag of chips (you guessed it, opened), and a half-full carton of eggs. Yes, an egg carton. With eggs. Upstairs, under a child's bed, in the summer.

Y'see, it was just after Easter, and they had of course colored boiled eggs and hid them, then found them, and ate them. At that time, I didn't yet understand that the path of a child's thought is made of squiggly cork-screw lines, with little resemblence to reality. And every lesson you give your children is never the one you're trying to teach them.

He got most of the stuff this particular day from the fridge (the peanut butter was out on the counter) except for the chips-those were kept on top of the fridge. I naturally asked my son how he got the chips down. "Did you climb on the cabinets?"

"No, Mommy, I'm not allowed to climb on the cabinets!" he told me with big eyes and a serious expression.

"Well, then how did you get the chips?" A reasonable question.

"Well," he said, "I leaned up against the fridgerator, and the fridgerator moved, and then the chips just fell right in my hands!"

Riiiighhhht. I didn't really explain to him that there was no way a 40-pound boy could move a refridgerator enough to rock it, let alone knock something off the top of it just by leaning on it. I just asked him to lean against the fridge like he did the night before. It didn't move (of course) so I asked him again if he climbed on the cabinets. He hung his little head down, and said, "Yeah."

I explained (for the forty-millionth-billionth time!) that he couldn't climb on the cabinets, couldn't take food in his room, et cetera, and I told him repeatedly that he could NOT take eggs out of the fridge, or no more eggs. Corner time ensued, talks, and he would always tell me that he understood, and that he wouldn't do it again, but nothing really ever worked. Every few days, I would find a crushed egg on the kitchen floor, and just knew it was time to check under his bed.

A few weeks later, we moved out of the apartment and into a house with a fenced-in yard, where the dog and the boys could roam. We locked the gates closed, because a boy that could move a refridgerator could open a gate. Who knows what mischief lives in the hearts of boys?

So, I'm walking through the living room a few weeks after we moved, and saw something under the futon that caught my eye. I stopped, leaned down, and looked. Three eggs, rolled toward the back of the futon. Shit! I went in the kitchen, and sure enough, smashed egg white and shells on the floor.

I called my son into the living room, pointed to the eggs, and asked, "Did you get these eggs out of the fridge?"

"No, Mommy," he said. Hmm.

"Well, if you didn't get them out of the fridge, how do you suppose they got there? Your brother's at school, your dad's at work, the baby is in his crib, and I know I didn't do it! You're the only one left."

And this was when I knew this kid was going to cause me problems. Because he wasn't the only one left. "Maybe," he said, "maybe, there's a bird's nest in the tree in the back yard. And maybe, uh, some eggs fell out of the bird's nest, and then maybe, maybe, uh, Dog picked up the eggs in his mouth and brought them inside, and maybe he put the eggs under the couch!" and he looked at me and smiled. The little shit.

I smiled back, "Well, son, maybe it could have happened that way if we had chickens living our back yard. DO we have chicken's in our back yard that I don't know about?"

"No..." he knew he was being trapped, he just didn't know how.

"But since we don't, these eggs couldn't have come from the back yard. See, eggs that come out of the fridge are chicken eggs, and chicken eggs that go in the fridge are different than bird eggs that come out of nests in the backyard. They're different colors and different sizes. That's how I know that these eggs came from the fridge."

"Oh." And now I could see I had his attention.

"Here's a story for you - maybe you got the eggs out of the fridge, and maybe dropped one on the floor, where it broke. And maybe you brought the eggs to the living room, and heard me coming and maybe you rolled the eggs under the couch and ran. And maybe, if you don't leave my damn eggs alone you'll be standing in the corner with a sore butt until next week! Now get in the corner!"

He eventually grew out of his egg-thieving ways. He went on to bigger and better stories. I was right about one thing, though: he's 15 now, and still thinks he can try to lie to me.