The cold, hard floor

Sam was pretty excited at the idea of learning a new Cranium game - a mini-sized kids’ version that came free with a Wendy’s snack that afternoon. While I was whipping up dinner, he began lining the cards up along the small Sam table in the kitchen so we’d be all ready to play the instant dinner was over. I pointed out that the tabletop was a little small for the three of us, and suggested he set up downstairs. By “downstairs,” I meant in the family room, where we play pretty much all of our games. However Sam chose to set up on the laundry room floor. The concrete laundry room floor.

I was a little apologetic, this time, when I explained that he’d picked another troublesome spot: he’d been meticulous in the playing card arrangement, and now dinner was ready and there was no time to start over. Chalk it up to a hunger, fatigue, or an alarming “stage,” but his anger went 0 to 60 and he vehemently replied with hot tears in his eyes that he was NOT moving the game, that we WOULD sit ourselves down in front of the dryer, and that if we refused then he would NEVER play this game EVER.

We attempted to reason with him a bit before deciding that it would be smarter to get a meal into him before preaching the error of his ways. Didn’t matter. He was unyielding to the end, fists balled up in anger, face screwed up in rage at the injustice of it all. So we put the game away. Too late to save the day, we cajoled him towards an early bedtime with the promise of innumerable fairy tales. We read for almost an hour together, through Beauty and the Beast, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, The Little Mermaid—at which point he asked, “Why is there so much marrying in these stories?”—so we moved on to the child heroes in Hansel and Gretel, King Midas, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Pinocchio.

At the happy resolution of that last tale, I remarked: “Gepetto is happy that Pinocchio became a real live boy: he’s lucky to get a ‘boy-0’” to which Sam replied, “You and Daddy aren’t lucky to have me…” Gasp! I declared him to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us and asked why he would say otherwise. “Because we had that big fight before,” he explained. So I took a few minutes to assure Sam that people sometimes have disagreements, and are sometimes upset with each other, but that families love each other and always find a way to work things out. Having arguments sometimes doesn’t mean we’re not always lucky to have each other. Sam seemed mollified. He snuggled down under the covers, flipped over on to his side, and sighed deeply.

But before I could congratulate myself on my superb parenting, I heard him whisper, in the quietest voice he could manage with conviction: “Tomorrow, we are all going to play that game on that floor!” My stubborn little boy. I guess it’s a tough lesson to learn—that all of that righteous fury amounts to so many pebbles tossed against the brick wall of a united Mom and Dad.