“SHIT!” yelled Tracey, leaping past me. “TURN THAT OFF! TURN THAT OFF!”
“What is it?” I called after her. I could hear the laptop playing some sort of video, and then abruptly not, but I couldn’t make out what was being played. Still, based on Tracey’s reaction, there was only one solution. “Was there swearing?”
Given the language my kids wade through here at home on a daily basis – Tracey has a mouth like a trucker – it must have been akin to a Tarantino film.
“That’s enough electronics for a while,” I heard Tracey telling one of the kids. “And you won’t be watching those sorts of videos again. Alright?”
“Who’s in the poo?” I asked Tracey when she arrived back.
“The usual suspect,” she said, taking up with the washing again. My mind immediately went to Miss4, but I was about as far off as it’s possible to get in this family unit. “You.”
“What have I done?!”
“You got the kids to watch that stupid 5 ways to get your parents to say yes.”
Yes, I did. And I was having nothing but praise for that particular decision.
“Have you watched it?” I asked, my voice inexplicably up an octave. Probably self righteousness, but without a medical opinion I can’t rule out a dangle-berry was possibly retracting. “It’s gold! The kids will be asking us for stuff, like they always do, but in nice voices and with carefully considered reasons. It’ll be months before they realise we’re still saying no to almost everything they ask for. It’ll be like the best holiday we’ve ever been on.”
Tracey ignored my carefully considered reasoning – she’s such a natural parent.
“You know what happens at the end of the video?”
I carefully considered this too.
“It asks you to subscribe?”
“It goes onto another video,” snapped Tracey. I hadn’t carefully considered that. “And then another, and then another. And then,” she said, taking the wind out of my up-an-octave voice with a slightly pregnant, first trimester pause, “it plays a video to your six year old daughter explaining how she can fool her parents into letting her stay home from school.”
“Shit,” I hissed, because I decided Tracey was absolutely spot on with her initial assessment of the situation. “How far did she get?”
“How preparation is the key to having a day off sick. You have to start the night before, then rub your eyes in the morning until they’re red and not get out of bed.”
“Soooo…”
“It’s all the stuff we look for when trying to decide if they’re really sick or not.”
At the risk of sounding like my trucker wife, it’ll be a kick in the retractile dangle-berry if any of that advice sunk into the sponge-like six-year-old brain of our daughter’s.
I suspect we’re totally farked.
Which, that being the case, will then not be something I’ll be able to say about myself in a happy way for a good, long while.
“Raising a family on little more than laughs”
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I knew that video was bad news……. my kids are only 3 and a half so I’m safe 😉