Crime And Poonishment

“That’s it!” a friend of mine said after some unacceptable behaviour from her daughter, Little Miss Sadface. “You can stop playing that now and help your dad outside.”

“She can spend the rest of the afternoon picking up the dog poo in the back yard,” said my friend’s husband. My friend had pictured something more like weeding or doing the edges.

Now personally I prefer to mow the dog poo into the grass. I see it as good fertilizer, which of course just means I’m too civilized or lazy, take your pick, to do it. Only downside can be if I leave it too long between mows and I hit a really dry poo and suddenly I’m walking through a toxic cloud. It certainly encourages me to start the mower more regularly than I’d like.

Half an hour later my friend’s husband was leaning in the sliding door, grinning and whispering to his wife.

“Hey, Darl,” he said. “You know she’s picking the turds up with her hands?”

“What?” shrieked my friend as she ran to the window to have a peek.

Sure enough, there was Little Miss Sadface walking around the yard picking up bits of dog poo and dropping them in the bucket.

“Stop her!” said my friend.

Her husband shrugged and held her back.

“She’s already done half the yard. She may as well finish the job now. It’ll teach her a lesson. There’s nothing wrong with getting a little dog poo on you.”

What lesson? Don’t bite your nails? My friend looked at her husband to try gauge if he was serious. He was.

“It’s her own fault she’s using her hands,” he argued. “She knows I use a shovel.”

So my friend watched on from the window while her daughter  suffered a far worse punishment than she’d intended.

“Finished, Mum,” Little Miss Sadface announced some fifteen minutes later.

“Well, that’s good. Now go tell your father then get cleaned up,” she said. Adding, “And make sure you give your hands a really good scrub.”

Pleased it was all over, my friend was therefore surprised a few minutes later to hear her husband snapping at their daughter again. Then he stomped his way past her and into the house looking very upset. A few steps behind him was Little Miss Sadface.

“What did you do this time?” my friend asked her daughter.

“Nothing,” she said.

“You must have done something. Your dad’s really upset.”

“I just did what you said. I went and said I’d finished my punishment and had learned my lesson,” said Little Miss Sadface. “And then I gave him a big hug, and he went off!”

When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’  Facebook Page.

 ’raising a family on little more than laughs’

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