Busted

So Max, the Rose and the Boy are all sick, to varying degrees; he’s just got a bit of a cough, but the two oldest both have pretty high fevers, and Max decides to make things inneresting by investing in both a cough and the high fever.

It’s a bit after eight of the clock in the evening, Top Management is off at the brand-spankin’-new piano class she's trying on for size, bein’ all Wynton Kelly and whatnot, and the oldest three girls are sprawled on the couch, Max and the Bean reading, the Rose just staring off into space, still as still can be.

I walk towards the back to check on the Boy, who’d wisely conked out a few minutes earlier, still with his glasses on, of course. As I pass the Blue Room I see, out of the corner of my eye, Senator Smoosh on the floor, playing.

I take a few more steps and stop. I’m not sure what she’s playing with, but there’s a large number of objects, and all the objects are pretty small. And even a quick glance has given my brain enough information to realize that the objects probably weren’t toys. And of course the fact that the Blue Room is currently deserted, its regular occupants all sequestered on the couch in the living room, makes this a most convenient time to raid drawers belonging to big sisters.

All this goes through my peabrain in a matter of milliseconds. I back up and peek in and the good senator’s head shoots up instantly. “No,” she breathes.

Her expression is sincere, plaintive, mayhap a tad guilty, impossibly fetching, the timbre of her voice as she mews her plea irresistible, all the more so because I have no doubt she didn’t mean to say it, she didn’t plan to say it, it came out of her instantly, busted as she was.

By now I’ve seen that what she’s playing with indeed belongs to her big sister and, indeed, are not toys: she has gotten into a small box of hair supplies, rubber bands, barrettes, other follicle-related doodads of which I, as the male of the species, am incapable of learning the names. With the training acquired osmotically from being a parent for 37 years in the aggregate, I can see there’s nothing there obviously life-threatening, unless, of course, the Rose were to find out. But the Rose is incapacitated at present. And besides, she’s putty in the good senator’s hands, like the rest of us.

But just as Senator Smoosh has protested automatically and not of her own volition, so do I assume a reproving facial expression all unwilling. It’s only later that I realize I’ve done it, as her reaction causes my nervous system to run a brief systems analysis. And when it does, I realize that my eyebrows have raised inquiringly and that I’ve got a quite small, somewhat amused smile. I can feel these things. And although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that what I’m doing is unconsciously aping the expression Top Management gets when, for example, I arrive home on a Friday night and tell her that I’m planning on spending 98% of the next 60 hours in a horizontal position, never attaining verticality for more than a few minutes at a time.

At which point Top Management gets that same somewhat amused, distinctly superior but patiently and lovingly so expression on her face. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a “well, that does sound pleasant,” or something along those lines.

Top Management, of course, has every right to assume a superior expression. I have no such right, certainly not with her, and assuredly not with her youngest, given that as a female she’s already automatically my better, and in this precise case, being the Next Step in Human Evolution, considerably more advanced than I.

And yet assume the expression I do. Which I realize only when she follows her mewled demurral with a breathy, heartfelt and heartrendingly tender, “please.”

I steel myself. I nod, smile gently, step away from the door, and melt. Sometime later, Top Management comes home, and as she opens the front door, a brisk winter wind whips in with her, chilling the house as only a San Diego breeze in the low 60s can, reviving me and causing me to regain my status as a solid rather than a liquid.

I test out my resolidified muscles and stand. Poking my head back into the Blue Room, I see that she has cleaned up all her ill-gotten non-toys. The skeptical would say it’s so she wouldn’t get busted by her big sisters.

But I know it’s simply another sign of her advanced nature.

Who, me? Do something I’m not supposed to? The very notion. Why, just one look at the hair falling fetchingly over my eyes should indicate I’m incapable of being less than perfect...

[Editor’s note: this is a recreation for illustrative purposes only and not from the actual event in question.]

Comments

[sarah in va]

You do know how to grow them, don't you? Darling. Wish I could get my hands on her.

[KathyR]

That little bitty girl put away all of the goodies all by herself? She's a genius, she is. And unbearably cute.

[patience]

Ha, I was just snickering at you and thinking how she has you absolutely wrapped around her little finger ... and then as I scrolled down I came upon the photo. Sigh. What an angel. I can't imagine her doing anything that wasn't utterly adorable and entirely forgiveable. She has *me* wrapped around her little finger, and I've never even met her.

[shannon]

That girl is so stinkin' cute. I'm sure that she doesn't have you wrapped around her little finger at all.

[Lissa]

Good grief, who dresses that child??

[scott]

Not sure, but it appears the person’s previous gig was dressing the children on the last few seasons of The Brady Bunch.

[Emily]

She reminds me a lot of myself at that age--but I colored on wallpaper and generally made a disastrous mess. And the "who, me?" look usually happened when I was busted.
And I didn't even *try* to follow the Senator's good example and clean up.

[Meredith]

Very sweet, the cutie in the picture I mean :)

[Rebecca]

She is darling. Mismatched is the new black. :)

Oddly, we have that EXACT same basket and it holds our...Brio trains.