Serious Whimsy » Jolana Malkston

Mr. Kiss Of Death To Computers

Oct 022013

Jolana Malkston 2 When Macho Guy met his first computer, there was no love at first sight. There was no grudging respect at first sight. There was no resigned tolerance at first sight. Heck no. When Macho Guy got his first gander at the computer his company foisted on him, it was loathing at first sight. He used it grudgingly, the engineer in him fiercely clinging to his trusty slide rule.

On the other hand, I had a different emotional reaction to that first computer. I broke out in a cold sweat. The thought of using it terrified me. All I had to do was place one finger on the wrong key and the computer would explode or implode or shout, “Warning! Warning, Will Robinson!” So, I gave the computer a wide berth. I didn’t want to be the one who dispatched it to cyber-heaven.

One day soon afterward, Macho Guy brought home a word processing application to load onto the computer. Firstborn was writing basic computer programs in school by then, so of course he already knew how to operate the application.

Firstborn showed me the word processing ropes. After he showed me how to launch the application and how to use the menus, he began ticking off the time and work saving features. First, he told me I could move blocks of text around until they were where I wanted them to be without having to retype, and then he demonstrated how to do it.

I was agog. Really? I can do that? Today must be Christmas.

Typing and spelling errors didn’t matter, he said. Spellcheck fixes them. No erasing of copies necessary. No retyping necessary.

Seriously? No matter how badly I type? Oh, thank you, Santa.

No more messy carbon copies, he said. Just save the completed document, send it to the printer and print as many copies as I want.

Oh, wondrous marvel! I must be dreaming. Somebody pinch me.

Ouch! Must children take their parents so literally?

Everything changed from the moment I discovered the existence of word processing. As the world’s slowest and most inaccurate typist, I suddenly saw the computer as my new best friend. It was a defining moment for me. It motivated me to overcome my anxiety and learn how to compute.

I rushed to sign up for computer classes at our local community college. My boys were thrilled. Now they would get to see how well Mom did in school and nag her to get good grades. They hovered like baby vultures when I brought home my first test paper. An A, of course. I didn’t dare get anything less. I would never have heard the end of it.

To cut to the chase, I took to the computer like Garfield to lasagna. It was love at second sight. I adored the computer and couldn’t wait to get one of my own. I became computer literate, but more intuitive than expert. I feel my way around computer apps. I discover hidden features by accident. I’m curious. I’m adventurous. I’m fearless.

I take that back. I’m never fearless when Macho Guy goes anywhere near my computer. The awful truth is that it wasn’t long before Firstborn, Little Brother and I discovered that Macho Guy is Mr. Kiss of Death to Computers. His touch—his mere presence in the same room—is devastating and sometimes lethal to computers. We never discovered how or why. To employ an overused phrase, it is what it is, and it can be very, very scary to be away from home and learn that Mr. Kiss of Death to Computers has your computer in his crosshairs.

For instance, there was the time I went to Atlanta, Georgia for an RWA^® National Conference. I couldn’t very well cart my mini-tower computer onto the jet with me. It had to remain behind in my home office where it was unfortunately vulnerable to unforeseen circumstances.

As usual, my writer buds and I were hanging out in the lounge after dinner. We parked ourselves on the floor in a corner of the room (all the chairs and tables were occupied) with adult beverages in hand. We were dishing about the conference and our editor/agent appointments when my cellphone rang. It was Macho Guy.

We could barely hear each other over the din in the lounge, most of it coming from my buds. I thought I heard him say something about a storm and lightening. With a finger in one ear and my cellphone pressed against the other, I asked him to repeat what he said.

He said there was a thunderstorm the previous night. Fortunately, the lightening missed our house. It struck a tall and beautiful blue spruce tree in our front yard leaving a vertical scar on its bark the full length of its trunk, and the energy from the strike blew the nearby newly planted young plum tree right out of the ground. Macho Guy had to replant it come morning.

I almost spilled my merlot down the front of my suit. We both had top of the line UPS devices protecting our computers from power outages and surges, but the huge power surge a lightening strike would create could take out those UPS devices, the computers and everything electronic in the vicinity. Fearing the worst, I asked if the UPS devices managed to protect our computers.

Yes, they had. It looked to him as if both UPS devices died in the line of duty, and the computers they protected lived to compute another day. Whew! I asked if we lost power. No, he said we didn’t lose power, only our Internet connection but said he was taking care of it.

ME: What do you mean, you’re taking care of it?

MACHO GUY: I’m on the other phone with the cable guy.

ME: You mean tech support?

MACHO GUY: Yeah, the cable guy is going to help me get us back online, but he says we need your computer’s password.

ME: My computer password? Why do you—Oh. My. God! Are you in my office?

MACHO GUY: Yep. The cable guy made me do that power down and power up thing, and the modem is in your office, so—

ME: [I take a huge swig of merlot as visions of all my manuscripts being accidentally deleted flash before my eyes.] Um, Sweetheart? You haven’t touched my computer, have you?

MACHO GUY: Uh-huh, the cable guy had me turn it on. He says we might need to change some of the settings.

ME: No! No changing settings. Do not touch my computer again. Stop what you’re doing this instant and get the [expletive deleted] away from my computer! Now. Right now. Tell the tech support guy I’ll take care of it when I get home and hang up!!

MACHO GUY: But—

ME: No buts! Hang up on him and leave my office. I mean it. I want you out of there now. Don’t touch anything. Don’t look at anything. Don’t even breathe on anything. You know you’re the kiss of death to computers.

MACHO GUY: I am not the kiss of death to computers. I hate it when you say that. It’s not true.

ME: Three dead computers would disagree with you and so would my laptop. Every time I let you use my laptop to read your email when we’re traveling, it doesn’t work right afterward and I have to fix it. So don’t tell me you’re not the kiss of death.

MACHO GUY; [He grumbled something unintelligible that I assumed was swearing.]

ME: Are you out of my office yet?

I had grown so pale and was shaking so hard that after I hung up with Macho Guy, my buds signaled the waitress for me to order another glass of merlot ASAP. I sort of lost it, I guess. I ranted about lightening and power surges and that Macho Guy probably killed my computer because I wasn’t there to protect it from him. I couldn’t stop thinking of the possibility that all the data on my hard drive no longer existed. I believe I may have had more than one additional glass of merlot.

I assessed the lightening damage when I returned home. There was a large starburst pattern in the soil surrounding the base of the blue spruce where the lightening’s energy penetrated the ground. The blue spruce was once the most beautiful tree on our property, but I could see by the large gaping scar left by the lightening that the poor tree was doomed. I learned that the lightening’s energy had also travelled under our driveway and zapped our next-door neighbor’s brand new widescreen TV, but didn’t touch their old TV. That just wasn’t fair.

I discovered to my dismay that the lightening strike did a rather thorough job on our home office equipment. The modem was a goner, but the cable company would replace that. The UPS devices were goners and would need replacing. [Cha-ching!] Our all-in-one printer was a goner and had to be replaced. [Cha-ching!] Even the Ethernet cards in both of our computers were fried and we would have to buy replacements. [Cha-ching!] Ouch, ouch and ouch!

Fortunately the computers survived without any additional damage and so did my manuscripts and other vital data, no thanks to Macho Guy, but please don’t tell him that. Mr. Kiss of Death to Computers really hates to hear it.

Confessions Of A Former Soccer Mom

Serious Whimsy 6 Responses »

Sep 252013

This past weekend, my nine-year-old granddaughter’s team participated in an area-wide soccer tournament for girls. The soccer complex was huge with at least a half dozen soccer fields; several games were going on at the same time, whistles blowing from every direction.

It was cold and overcast on the first day and windy. Very windy. The wind whipped across that wide-open space and chilled all of us to the bone—except for the players who kept warm so long as they were moving.

Along the sidelines, parents either sat or stood watching their girls and cheering them on. Oh, not so much cheering them on as nagging them on, actually. Occasionally, there was a “Yay, team!” or a “Nice try!” but most of their shouts sounded a lot like this:

“Don’t just stand there, move! Move!”

“Get after that ball! Don’t let her take it away from you!”

“Don’t jog, run! Run faster! Keep going!”

“Hustle! Come on, girls, hustle! Show some team spirit!”

I cringed when I heard them because it brought back embarrassing memories. The “parental prodding” I heard this past weekend reminded me of Macho Guy and me years ago—the two of us plus the parents of Baby Brother’s other soccer team members.

We also assumed our kids were slacking off and not putting forth their best efforts, and we scolded at them from the sidelines to do better. I suppose we considered ourselves honorary coaches.

Close to mid-season, Baby Brother’s soccer coach sent home a flyer announcing a potluck picnic for the team members and their families. We were surprised because the teams normally had a picnic or banquet at the end of soccer season and distributed trophies or other prizes at that time.

It turned out to be a gorgeous day for a picnic, sunny and warm, not hot and humid. We socialized, grilled hot dogs and pigged out on the potluck dishes and desserts. Afterward, the coach announced a surprise special activity for the afternoon—a soccer game, the kids on the team versus their parents (their mostly out-of-shape parents, to be accurate) that he would referee.

Macho Guy, thinking fast, volunteered to be our goalie so he wouldn’t have to run all over the field. My, but he thought he was clever. We’ll see about that.

I was assigned the right wing position. I never played soccer before in my life. What I knew about it I learned from watching Firstborn and Baby Brother play. I was totally green, totally clueless. I hadn’t played a sport other than golf since high school, and golf doesn’t require one to run after a ball and kick it. If you do, you’re disqualified—unfortunately.

At the kickoff, the soccer ball headed in my direction. I ran toward it as fast as I could, which wasn’t fast enough because a forty-pound Lilliputian beat me to it and kicked it really, really hard. He kicked that soccer ball right in my face and it struck me in the eye. Eee-yow! I saw so many stars that I thought I was part of the Milky Way. The ref blew his whistle, signaling time out and that my soccer career was over before it started. I was in the game for approximately thirty seconds before being helped off the field with an icepack over an already swollen right eye that was tearing like Niagara Falls. I spent the rest of the game on the bench, the envy of the other parents, watching the game with my one good eye and cheering my teammates on.

As the other parents went on and off the field, I heard them grumble about leg cramps and stomach cramps, about their lungs being on fire, about being tired and thirsty and wanting to lie down somewhere. The parents were shocked that their kids were able to run rings around them. After all, they were bigger and stronger than the kids and should have prevailed.

As for Macho Guy, some goalie he was. The kids used him for target practice. They didn’t just aim at the goal; they aimed at him. After a while, Macho Guy gave up protecting the goal and protected himself instead. He would have been better off running around the field because it would have been harder for a kid to hit a moving target—unless the kid happened to be a forty-pound Lilliputian.

The game was never a contest; it was a rout from the start. The kids humiliated the parents. They massacred the parents. They annihilated the parents. The parents slinked off the field completely mortified, but with newfound respect for what it took to play soccer for an entire game—and what it felt like to be injured during a soccer game—no doubt the object lessons the team’s clever coach had in mind.

After that eye-opening (well, not for me) game at the picnic, only positive cheers rang out from the sidelines during the rest of soccer season. We parents learned our lesson the hard way but we learned it well.

Are there any soccer moms out there with confessions of their own? I’d love to read about them. 🙂

Him Tarzan, Her Jane

Serious Whimsy 7 Responses »

Sep 172013

If reading about sex offends you, you may wish to stop reading now.

If reading about public sex offends you, despite being comically disastrous, definitely stop reading now.

If you are still reading, allow me to introduce the Him Tarzan, Her Jane protagonists.

Tarzan: an experienced Country Boy, aka Macho Guy.

Jane: a naive and virginal Big City Girl, aka Yours Truly.

Talk about casting against stereotype. You’d think it should be the other way around—experienced Big City Woman, naive and virginal Country Boy. Not this Tarzan/Jane duo. Tarzan lost his virginity in his early teens. As a good little overprotected teenage Catholic girl, Jane was naive in the extreme when it came to sex and remained a virgin until her wedding night.

Jane’s naiveté knew no bounds. The following incident is a case in point. Jane was chatting with a group of college classmates at lunch. When friend Jean pulled out her makeup bag to freshen her lipstick, she lost her grip on the open bag and it fell to the floor. A thin, flat and round rubbery object rolled out. Jane glanced at it, puzzled, and asked, “How do you put your makeup on with that?” For about three seconds, there was stunned silence, and then the others broke out in raucous laughter. When the laughter finally died, Jean explained to Jane’s bright red face that a diaphragm was a birth control device, not a makeup applicator. The girls never let Jane live it down.

Jane was also naive when it came to public sex. Of course, she knew about some disreputable teens who parked in darkened, out of the way places and fogged up their car windows while doing the nasty in the back seat. Scandalous! Jane wrapped herself in moral superiority and swore she would never do anything so vulgar, inappropriate and obviously illegal.

Never say never. Jane met and wed Tarzan, who had a very different worldview of acceptable places for sexual encounters. Jane soon realized she was expected to be an avid participant or, at the very least, a darn good sport—and she was, as the following vignettes attest.

Sex is God’s joke on human beings. ~Bette Davis

Two for the Road

Shortly following their honeymoon, Tarzan and Jane were driving home late at night after visiting her parents in another state. Tarzan, who behaved like a gentleman during the visit with his in-laws (he kept his hands and his other significant body parts off Jane the entire time), commented that he couldn’t wait to get home so he could jump her bones. Amused, Jane joked that they could stop at a rest area if he was that horny. Tarzan took the suggestion seriously, believing she was as horny as he was. He stopped at the very next rest area, parking a judicious distance from the few cars in the lot, and had his jeans unzipped before the startled Jane had the chance to explain she was just kidding. Getting out of the car and then getting back into the rear seat would signal what they were about to do, so Tarzan decided the front bench seat of their ancient used sedan would have to suffice. The resultant awkward shifting of positions and clumsy acrobatics in the cramped front seat area while semi-undressed made Jane regret both her wisecrack and never having taken gymnastics. On the other hand, Tarzan was oblivious to everything other than sexual gratification. He got it. Jane got to be a good sport and had a good laugh about it.

If you can’t laugh about sex, you shouldn’t be doing it. ~Sue Johanson

Beach Blanket Bingo

At Myrtle Beach, before the kids came along, Tarzan and Jane were attending a business conference. Late one evening, Tarzan suggested a moonlight walk on the beach. Before leaving their hotel room, he leered at Jane in her mini skirt and told her to remove her underwear. Jane asked why. Tarzan couldn’t believe she had to ask. They weren’t just going for a “walk” on the beach. They were going to make a memory on the beach. Jane balked. Go out without wearing undies? Sex on the beach? In public? Nuh-uh. Tarzan wheedled. Tarzan cajoled. Tarzan begged. Jane caved. A stranger got on the down elevator with them. Jane was positive the stranger knew she was panty-less. She kept tugging her mini skirt down, but it refused to get any longer. She exited the elevator red-faced. Remember the beach sex scene in From Here to Eternity? Wet sand. Waves crashing over the lovers. Sexy, right? Sure looked that way. But as Jane discovered, having sex on the beach with damp sand working its way into every bodily crevice while you’re keeping a lookout to make sure no one observes you and your crazy mate behaving like rutting fools is not as erotic or as satisfying as it looks in the movies. None of which bothered Tarzan one little bit. He succeeded in making a beach memory. Jane’s memory was of going back up in the elevator red-faced, coated with sand, avoiding eye contact and then being a good sport by laughing about it with Tarzan in the shower.

“Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.” ~Billy Crystal

Roman Holiday

Tarzan and Jane spent their tenth anniversary touring Italy. As they were getting ready for bed on their last evening in Rome, Tarzan had a better idea. Making love in bed was too ordinary when in Rome. He stripped and coaxed Jane out of her negligee. The romantic devil led her out onto the balcony. Technically, he pretty much dragged Jane out onto the balcony. She shivered but not only from the cool night air. Her nerves jangled. Public nudity. Public sex. Public nuisance. The Carabinieri would toss them both in prison and throw away the key. They would never see their home, their family, their friends or each other ever again. Tarzan stretched out on the chaise lounge and beckoned her to him, which meant it was her bare bottom that would be on display for everyone in Rome to see. Oh, joy. Jane heard earthy Italian voices below the balcony. Taxi cab drivers she surmised, talking, laughing. Laughing at her, most likely. Jane sighed and acquiesced to Tarzan’s wishes. She calculated that if she talked dirty to him, they’d be done quicker and get back inside their room sooner. Ah, the things a good sport does for love, at home and abroad.

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. ~Lord Chesterfield

Climb Every Mountain

After that Roman escapade, Tarzan’s “original ideas” no longer fazed Jane. It was another anniversary, this time Tarzan and Jane elected not to travel—well, just not very far from home. They got a sitter for their kids and set out in a Jeep with a bottle of wine, cheese, crackers, grapes, baby oil, and a blanket. There was a full moon that night. Tarzan drove the Jeep off road and up the steepest hill in the foothills of the Shenandoah range. Jane was sure the Jeep would flip, roll back down the hill and orphan their children. Miraculously, they made it intact to the hilltop, which was fairly level and perfect for their planned activities. They spread the blanket, devoured the cheese, crackers and grapes, and washed them down with the wine. Then, with Jane feeling considerably mellow, they brought out the baby oil and got nekked. The first order of business was the couple’s massage. Tarzan and Jane slathered each other with baby oil, stretched out on the blanket and got to work. They were about to embark on the next order of business when they heard the sound of a car motor and spotted headlights advancing up the hill road. Uh-Oh. They scrambled to their feet. Jane reverted from mellow Jane to uptight Jane, frantic they’d be discovered. Tarzan leaned too far over the edge to get a better look at the road, stumbled and slid a few feet down the hillside. Jane thought he would fall all the way down the hill and freaked out. She grabbed for his hand and helped pull him back up, his shins and elbows skinned and his pride wounded. They both dressed in a frantic rush, all the while keeping a lookout for those headlights. To their relief, the headlights turned aside at a fork in the road and disappeared. Whew! They remained undiscovered. Jane figured their romantic evening in the great outdoors was over. She should have known better than to underestimate Tarzan. Like Mr. Spock, Tarzan blocked out his pain and the activities went on as planned. What a guy, and what a good sport, proving Franklin P. Jones correct.

Sex is a two-way treat. ~Franklin P. Jones

Now it’s your turn to fess up. Have you done the horizontal samba in unusual places? Come on, folks, dish! 🙂

Man’s Best Fiend

Serious Whimsy 7 Responses »

Sep 102013

No, I didn’t spell it incorrectly. What follows is not a tale of “man’s best friend.” When I wrote “fiend” in the title, I meant it. If you read Marley and Me or saw the film, you can guess why.

At age twelve, our Lovable Lab left us for the Great Dog Kennel in the Sky. I was heartbroken and wouldn’t consider getting another dog. I didn’t want to face the future loss of another pet. Aside from a few bad habits—filching our unguarded snacks, shedding constantly and passing toxic gas—Lovable Lab would be a tough act to follow. No more dogs. Nope. Never again. Wouldn’t let the guys bring up the subject in my presence.

I should mention that I was and still am the only female in our household—even our pets have always been male—so I was outnumbered. The male majority decided to get another dog. When I objected once more, Macho Guy, Firstborn and Baby Brother voted me off the island.

The male triumvirate decided against another Labrador retriever. No other Lab could measure up to Lovable and would be a continual reminder of our loss. They bought a book on dog breeds and began searching the contents for Lovable’s successor.

Pay very close attention to what I am about to tell you. It’s crucial, and here it is: Never choose a dog based on what you read about the breed in a book. I cannot stress this enough. Never. Never. Never. We did it once and only once, and it was one time too many.

The triad discovered their candidate for pethood in that dog book. They fell all over themselves trying to win me over to the dark side. They were the irresistible force; I was the immovable object. The threesome took the book to me already open to the page devoted to the American Eskimo breed and insisted that I at least have a look.

I looked. The breed resembled an arctic fox. Beautiful, really. Pardon me for employing a cliché; its long fine fur was as pure white as snow. According to the book, the American Eskimo doesn’t drool, its fur has no odor and stays clean when brushed regularly, and the breed only sheds once a year. {The troika was quick to point that out; the three knew how much I disliked vacuuming up after the constantly shedding aforementioned Lovable Lab.) The one negative I spotted was “likes to bark.” The more I gazed at the dog’s photo, the more uneasy I became. You know that hinky feeling you get when you sense impending disaster? Well . . .

Of course I gave in. Being outnumbered and outvoted guaranteed that I would. The big boy and the two little boys began scouring the classifieds to find American Eskimo puppies. Victory whoops accompanied the discovery of a breeder a short distance from our home. Oh, joy.

Naturally, the testosterone trio picked out a male pup. He was three months old when we took him home, and he was not housebroken. He demonstrated that little detail on several occasions. I suppose we were partly to blame for his becoming our problem pup. We didn’t have sense enough to buy a crate and crate train him. Instead, we put the pup in the boys’ old playpen.

Eventually, I learned that the dog book contained a significant inaccuracy about American Eskimo dogs. Remember the claim that this breed only sheds once a year? Right. Our AE started shedding on January 1 and stopped shedding on December 31, so sure, that’s once a year. The dog book also contained a huge understatement: the American Eskimo dog likes to bark. No. Our AE loved to bark and barked constantly. He lived to bark. He even barked at bird farts.

There were also noteworthy omissions from that book. For example, AEs are trash connoisseurs, and they can climb. I discovered these missing details when I returned from shopping one afternoon. Before leaving, I put our little AE pup in the playpen. Upon returning home, the pup greeted me at the door, panting, tail wagging. That little surprise was nothing in comparison to the shock I experienced when I walked into the war-torn battleground that once was my kitchen. The trash receptacle lay on its side, mortally wounded, its innards strewn on the floor in every direction. The invading force sat at my feet wagging his tail and beaming with pride at the devastation he wrought. In his twisted little mind, I believe he expected praise for his accomplishment. I imagine my screams startled and confused him.

That was only the beginning. The list of the AEs escapades is extremely long, so I’ll just give you a few of the highlights.

One week after we brought him home, he bypassed the steps and attempted to leap onto the back deck from the ground. He didn’t make it. He slammed into the side of the deck, broke his right hind leg and fell to the ground.

Baby Brother (a teen by then) left an open bag of chocolate stars in the den and went out to play hoops. The AE ate the entire bagful. During the night, he barfed up the chocolate all over the house, staining our greige carpet, and had to be rushed to the vet with chocolate poisoning.

The AE loved to chew things but he was very selective. He never chewed anything old, always something new. For example, Baby Brother had two sets of headphones lying on his bed, one new and one broken. The AE chewed the new one. Macho Guy bought himself a new pair of wingtip shoes. The AE got into his closet, ignored all the older pairs of shoes and chewed the tongues out of the brand new ones. Macho Guy is also our handy guy. He had a huge collection of power tools in his basement workroom. We locked the AE down there to keep him from wrecking the rest of the house while we were out. We even put him in a harness and tied him to one of the posts. Somehow, he slipped out of the harness and chewed all the cords off Macho Guys power tools.

One time Macho Guy set out to catch a mouse in the den with traps baited with peanut butter. He caught something bigger. The AE loved peanut butter and he was always too curious for his own good. He found one of the traps. We heard a loud WHAP! The AE barreled out of the den yelping. He slammed into one wall after another and then began running around the house. When we finally caught up to him, we discovered the trap hanging from his tongue.

He also succeeding in embarrassing the family by flunking dog obedience school twice.

I cannot explain why, but we all loved that crazy dog and were grief stricken when he died. If nothing else, the AE was unforgettable.

Chocolate is My Kryptonite

Serious Whimsy 8 Responses »

Sep 032013

I am powerless in the presence of chocolate. I have been since childhood. I know for a fact that I could never be a superhero; I grow weak just thinking about chocolate.

One Lenten season in my youth, I elected to make the ultimate sacrifice. I announced to my family that I was giving up chocolate for Lent. I told myself it would only be for forty days. I could live for forty days without chocolate. Forty days isn’t such a long time.

Oh, please.

It seems I was deceiving myself, because here’s the reality check. Forty days without chocolate is a long time. Forty days without chocolate feels like an eternity. Forty days without chocolate stretches out to infinity and beyond.

You may be curious to know if I lasted the entire forty days. Take a wild guess. You don’t have to? Right. You know I didn’t make it to the finish line. I won’t risk telling you how short a time I managed to hang in there. If I did, you would lose all respect for me.

At times, chocolate kryptonite makes me lose all respect for myself. A classic example: The Peculiar Case of the Vanishing Chocolate Easter Eggs.

The peculiar circumstance occurred when my sons were much younger. After spring break, when Firstborn and his Baby Brother were still in grade school, they arrived home to find that their chocolate Easter bunnies mysteriously lost a few inches in height. It appeared as if someone (I confess; it was yours truly.) had bitten off their ears. I had no shame. I threw their pet Labrador retriever under the bus. The Lovable Lab was known to filch unguarded snacks at every opportunity. Lovable Lab was a convenient fall guy. Firstborn was skeptical; Baby Brother was still too young and trusting to catch on.

Before he left for school the following morning, Firstborn took out a ruler and measured both chocolate bunnies. Then he took both baskets from the dining room table and hid them. Ouch. That stung. How had it come to this? I hung my head and vowed never again to mooch their candy.

After the boys left for school, I went down to the lower level and got the laundry started. When I came back upstairs, I stopped short at the top of the landing. What on Earth? My nice clean floor was a mess. Little pieces of colored foil were scattered everywhere—in the foyer, the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and down the hallway to the bedrooms. I followed the trail of foil debris; it led me to an open closet in Firstborn’s bedroom. The Easter baskets were in disarray on the floor of that closet. All the foil-covered chocolate Easter eggs were gone. Uh-Oh.

The Lovable Lab came up behind me, grimacing and sticking out his tongue as if he were trying to spit something out. I grabbed him by the muzzle, opened his mouth and found little pieces of foil clinging to his larcenous tongue. Eww. One look at that foil-covered tongue and the baskets it assaulted, and it didn’t take the CSI team to deduce the identity of the perpetrator and what took place at the scene of the crime. Unlike the CSIs, however, I didn’t preserve the evidence or the crime scene. I cleaned it up. I picked every last shred of foil off that sloppy tongue—ugh—and tossed it out. Then I followed the trail of foil from room to room with my vacuum cleaner.

I suppose Firstborn thought he was very clever in hiding the Easter baskets on the floor inside his closet. He must have been very sure I wouldn’t go anywhere near his closet because the last time I did, I found a baggie containing an aging half sandwich coated with blue, green and grey fuzz. (Firstborn didn’t want me to know that he didn’t eat all of his lunch, so he brought the half sandwich home and hid it in his closet. Thank heaven it didn’t attract rodents or insects. Had it remained in there any longer, I suspect it would have fossilized. 🙂

Firstborn was careless in hiding the baskets; he didn’t take care to close the louvered doors tightly. Lovable Lab the Snack Filcher sniffed out the baskets, pushed the louvered doors open with his muzzle, and looted the unprotected baskets. He gobbled up all the foil-covered chocolate eggs—foil and all—and then spit out pieces of pulverized foil on his merry intra-house journey.

I couldn’t help feeling guilty over the loss of the foil covered chocolate eggs. I knew it wouldn’t have happened if the boys believed they could trust me with their chocolate bunnies and other candy while they were in school. It wasn’t easy to break the news to Firstborn and Baby Brother that the Lovable Lab found and ate their candy, and that their baskets would have been safer had they remained on the dining room table out of the Lovable Lab’s reach.

They both stared at me as if I had grown an extra eye in the middle of my forehead.Firstborn was the first to fling an accusation. “No, he didn’t; you did, Mom! You ate them. Just like you ate our chocolate bunnies.”

Baby Brother chimed in. “Yeah, Mommy; it was you.”

Too late, I realized I shouldn’t have cleaned up after the Lovable Snack-Filching Lab. The evidence that would have exonerated me was inside my vacuum cleaner. “You have to believe me. I’m telling you the truth. The dog ate them—with the foil still on them. He spit out the foil all over the house and I had to clean it up. I even had to pick the foil off his tongue. Smell his breath if you don’t believe me. You can smell the chocolate.”

Firstborn rolled his eyes at me. “We know you did it, Mom. You should be ashamed of yourself, blaming the dog. I’m telling Dad when he gets home.”

Baby Brother nodded in agreement. “Shame on you, Mommy.”

After I vowed never to mooch their chocolate again, there I stood, accused, tried and convicted of that very crime, a crime I didn’t commit. My pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears all because of my unsavory past as the family chocolate thief. The injustice of it all pained me. I glanced over at the real culprit—the Lovable Lab lying on the floor wagging his tail so hard it made loud thumping noises when it hit the floor.

I got the distinct impression that the Lovable Lab was enjoying my predicament. In fact, I thought he looked pleased—almost smug—and he didn’t seem all that lovable anymore. I wondered if he was trying to tell me something—something like: Serves you right for throwing me under the bus yesterday, Mom. Guess we’re even now. Right. More than even, I believe.

Now see if you can guess whether Macho Guy believed me when he came home from work that night . . .

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