Mischief

The other afternoon Abel asked me to make him a cup of tea. So I did – the way I always do: half cold water, half hot water, a gingerbread spice tea bag and a little spoonful of honey. When I brought it to him, in the next room, he thanked me and promptly asked for a snack to go with it.

I went back to the kitchen to spread some peanut butter on crackers, and when I returned, both the floor and the coffee table were covered with tea. The mug, upended, was standing in the middle of the tabletop puddle. The spoon was on the floor. Abel was busily playing with his spaceship toy a few feet away, apparently oblivious.

“Abel, what happened here?” I asked.

“It was by mistake,” was he reply.

At least he helped me clean it up.

*

A couple weeks ago, I returned home after a morning at work to find a tiny wet spot on the top of the refrigerator door. I checked for a cause, but finding nothing obvious, assumed that someone had left the freezer door ajar. I made sure the freezer was shut tight, and went on with my day.

We went out for the afternoon, and while making dinner that night, I found another wet spot, in the same place.

“Now that’s weird,” I thought to myself. But then I got distracted and forgot all about it.

That night, when Chris came to bed, he (uncharacteristically) woke me up to tell me he’d discovered something strange in the kitchen. (Oh, that’s right . . . .)

“The popsicles were kind soft in the freezer,” he said, “So I checked the temperature control. Someone had turned it all the way down.”

“Aha!” I briefly explained what I’d encountered earlier in the day.

Chris had dialed the freezer back to its regular setting, so I went back to sleep, relieved that the problem had been solved.

The next morning, I woke up to find an even larger wet spot than before. And when I reached for my yogurt, in the fridge, it was practically at room temperature.

“Maybe Chris turned the wrong dial,” I thought. So I checked. The freezer was indeed on its correct setting. But the fridge had been turned all the way down . . . to OFF. And when the fridge is turned off, the entire unit is turned off. It had been that way for about 20 hours at that point. We hadn’t noticed because the light in the fridge was still on.

When Abel woke up, I told him I was very upset because someone had been messing with the dials in the refrigerator.

“Was it you?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. I won’t do it again.”

“Abel, when you turn the fridge off, it means that some of our food gets spoiled and we have to throw it away. That makes mommy sad.”

“My favorite foods?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “I haven’t checked everything, but I know that your popsicles melted.”

He started to cry. I was relieved that at least we had a relatively empty fridge. But you can be sure that when I thumbed the dials back to their correct settings, I put clear tape over them to hold them in place.

*

Abel and I had done a few errands, and were going to make one last stop before going home – at Fedele’s, the chocolate store, to get a special treat for Daddy. We had just shared a treat from the health food store – some raspberry licorice shoelaces that Abel had picked out himself.

“We will only be getting a treat for Daddy here,” I explained as we got out of the car. “Nothing for you and nothing for me, because we just had a treat.”

“Okay Mommy.”

We went into the store and Abel immediately grabbed a $20 box of dark chocolate “tools” – a wrench, a hammer, a screwdriver, etc. that he’d had his eye on, on previous visits.

“Maybe for your birthday,” I remarked, and placed it back on the shelf.

“Okay Mommy.”

“Can you help me pick out some chocolates for Dad?”

We stood at the showcase and I began to tell the clerk what we wanted. Abel was helping me make the selection, but then he was gone. This is a small store – maybe 30 feet from end to end. I headed down the aisle, around the periphery of the store, just in time to find Abel seated on the floor, with an open box in his lap and a mischievous grin on his face. The box contained a dark chocolate hockey puck and a milk chocolate hockey stick (retail value: $8.00) -- and he’d taken a large bite out of the end of the stick.

I had to buy the damn chocolate.

Abel thought he’d gotten away with something until I made it clear that he would not be getting any of the chocolate. I ate it though – I hid it in a cupboard and snacked on it for a week and then some. One of my friends, a seasoned parent with four kids of her own, said I should have eaten right in front of him – with relish.

I guess we won’t be going to the chocolate store together again for a long time.

Ah, mischief. . . .