My Hero, My Nemesis

My good friend, The Taco Prophet, recently spoke about his two kids on his blog, Noggin Vomit. In the comments, BlueJeanGirl poses the question, "What do parents of only children do for laughs I wonder?"

I'll tell you what we do, my Blue friend: We mess with their minds.

Exhibit A: We went to Boone last weekend and stayed in a hotel suite with TVs in both rooms. Wife and I are watching one show in our room, and the Little Gnu is in the other room watching hers. Unbeknownst to her, the remote in my room works perfectly well on her TV over there. So I spent the better half of an hour randomly resetting the volume, changing channels, turning it off and just generally behaving like a poltergeist pointing my remote at the TV in the other room, until finally she cries out, "Daddy! The TV's messed up!"

Cue my hero shot: I walk in, bang the top of the TV, and boldly declare, "everything is fixed."

For about 10 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat. Mwahahahaa!

Exhibit B: The Little Gnu is watching a nature show on the Discovery Channel about snakes. I amble by with a warm, unopened Pepsi bottle in my hand. I walk up behind her and say, "Snakes on TV? Hope there aren't any snakes in the living room here."

"Oh don't be silly, Daddy, there are no snakes in here."

I stand right behind her head and twist open the bottle cap with a loud "PSHHHHH!"

When the poor child finally scraped herself off the ceiling, she chased me out into the garage. Good thing I unplugged all the power tools.