Suspicion

11.12.07

As I sit down to write this, the dog is grounded to Outside.  I don’t know when she can come back in.  I just have to wonder… why is everybody around here so darn naughty?

 

I had a lovely “girls’ night in” last weekend.  One friend brought pizza.  One brought chocolate.  Dark chocolate.  Ghiradelli chocolate.  With raspberry.  We hauled our winter scrap-booking projects out and worked and gabbed the night away. 

 

What remains is chocolate.  Two bowls on my dining room table filled with rich, dark, sensual chocolate.

 

Except that all of a sudden I realize the bowls are empty.  The table cloth is torn and scratched.  And the dog is acting down-right psychotic.

 

Oh no.

 

Did I hear somewhere that chocolate is fatal to dogs?  Hmm.  That would be two problems solved – waistline and constant aggravation.  Whoops, did I say that out loud?  Nah, no matter how aggravating the dog is, my child’s devastation would be worse to deal with.  At least I think it would be, although… she didn’t have any issues with flushing the goldfish…

 

Anyway.  Before I got distracted by the Case of the Missing Chocolate I was going to talk about counting bears.

 

Funny how you can tell there’s something up with your kid even though you can’t nail down exactly why you think there’s something up.  Is it body language?  Facial expression?  That creepy sixth sense that mothers just seem to have?

 

A few days ago when I picked my daughter up from school I could tell there was something going on.  Maybe it was the way she peeked into her jacket pocket and then wanted to go home immediately.  This, the child who never wants to go home.

 

“Hey, what’s your hurry today, Miss?”

 

“Nothing.  I don’t have nothing.”

 

Uh-huh.  Okay, I’ll bite.  “What do you have?”

 

“Nothing.  I didn’t find nothing.”

 

“What did you find?”

 

"It’s a secret."

 

I’m definitely intrigued now.  Last year when she didn’t have anything, I found 20 plastic character rings in her backpack.  The kind you might find on the top of cupcakes.  My daughter insisted she “found” them.  When I asked the teacher if my child should have so many rings, she cracked up.  All the kids had been looking for their rings all day long.  “But I found them, Mom.  I did.”  Upon further questioning it was determined that whenever another child set their ring down somewhere, MY child scooped it up and tucked it into her backpack.  Finders keepers and all that.

 

This time her secret was a tiny red plastic teddy bear.  Small enough to easily enclose in her fist.  “Can I take it home, Mommy?”

 

“I don’t know,” I said, “Let’s show it to the afternoon teacher and you can ask her.”

 

The afternoon teacher shrugged.  She didn’t know where it came from.  It was okay for my girl to take it home.

 

But the mystery of the bear grew a little more at home.  “This is my counting bear, Mom.”

 

“Why is it a counting bear?  Does it belong to a game at school?”

 

“No, no,” she insists, “It wasn’t part of a game.”

 

“How many counting bears are there?” I ask.

 

“Lots,” she says, “But this bear was nowhere.  I found it.”

 

Two days later when I picked her up from school I found EIGHT little counting bears in assorted colors piled next to her mailbox.  I am now eight times suspicious of one little red plastic bear.  I gathered them up and showed them to the daytime teacher.  “Do these belong somewhere?”

 

“They belong in the math center,” she said. 

 

I looked pointedly at my girl, “They belong in the math center,” I repeated, “and they need to stay at school.”

 

I could see she was agreeable, but I suspected it was mostly an attempt to keep me quiet about the little red counting bear that was already at home.  “I can keep the bear at home, right?” she whispered.

 

I made a compromise.  “Yes,” I said, “until you’re done playing with it, or until you feel bad about having it home.  Then it can come back here.”

 

I’d like to tell you how it all worked out, but I ungrounded the dog 5 minutes too soon, and now I have figure out if the room-sized rug can be saved.

 

Sometimes a mess can turn your stomach.  Sometimes it just smells likechocolate.