Literal Child

I was having the girls help me clean up.  Grace, my six year old, was goofing off and not being very helpful.  I found her pushing the highchair all around the dining room train fashion.

“Grace, put that away and help us clean,” I used my best mom voice.

“But where do I put it?” she asked.

“Push it under the table!”  Obviously that is where it goes right?  Don’t we push all the chairs under the table after we eat?  Honestly!  She promptly came out of the dining room ready for her next job, and we all finished tidying up the house.

Later that day, I went to put something away in the dining room and this is what I found:

I stopped and looked for a minute, not making sense of the scene before me.  And then I remembered my conversation with Grace.  I burst out laughing.  Children can be so literal.  I don’t know if that was the case this time, or if she did this out of rebellion, but I thought it was so funny.

The incident reminded me of my childhood.  My job was the dusting and oh how I hated it.  One time my mom made me drop what I was doing to complete the job, and I was none to happy about it.  As I dusted, I turned all my mom’s whatnots around to face the wall.  I was really going to show her.  When my mom walked in the room she burst out laughing.  Ever after that whenever I would dust, I would turn my mother’s two figurines to face the wall.  She would always smile and turn them back around.  It is one of my fondest childhood memories.  In fact, those two figurines are what I hope my parents will leave me someday.