Alternately titled: Payback is a Beast
Imagine this scene: You’re lying on a cloud buried beneathe warm, fluffy blankets made of the finest wool. The dark air around you is cool as the nighttime air slow begins to burn off. The sun hasn’t graced the sky with her rays just yet and you relish that dreamy moment between sleep and consciousness. It is peaceful. It is comfortable. It is blissful.
Now imagine that a spindly, gangly child jumps on the cloud with you. He burrows beneathe your blankets, bursting through your warm cocoon with his icy feet and shivering body. He tucks his toes underneath your legs causing you to yelp in surprise and yanking you, rather rudely, out of dreamland in one fell swoop.
Then he turns on the lamp and your eyes, still not fully prepared for wakefulness and accustomed only to the serenity of the dark, go blind. The light pierces through the room with such forcefulness that you wonder if perhaps you will ever be able to see again.
After this he turns to you with his eight year old morning breath and begins talking. Not whispering, mind you, but full out gabbing as if he’s in Grand Central Station during rush hour. Your senses are overwhelmed what with the light and the noise and the icy feet underneath.
Imagine he pulls out a photo album that he wants to look at with you and he wants to discuss every photo from seven years ago down to the very detail.
“I was cute wasn’t I?”
“Oh look how small I was!”
“What were we doing here?”
“How much did you love me then?”
And you want to engage, you really do. But you’re blind…and deaf…and paralyzed.
“Mom, open your eyes and look at this one! Wasn’t that fun? Tell me about it?”
You hear him but you don’t compute. Partly because you’re wondering how on Earth it happened that minutes ago you were sleeping on a cloud and now you’re being attacked before the sun is even lighting the sky an early morning grey. Plus, you’re too busy thinking about other things.
You’re dreaming about the coming day when he’s a teenager and rising before the crack of dawn is no longer exciting. He will long to spend a few extra hours in bed, wrapped in his own cocoon of warmth and then?
Then it’s going to be your turn.
*insert manaical laugh here*
You think of that moment when you can flip on his light and start chattering incessantly about how much you miss him being little and what a sweet baby he was and look at these old pictures, honey!
Maybe you’ll want to stick your icy feet under his covers and watch him gasp and try and get away. Although he’ll probably be bigger than you so that may not be wise, but you could at least yank off the covers and flip on the lamp sitting beside his bed causing light to pierce his eyeballs like hot daggars. You know…just for kicks.
This is all hypothetical, of course.
Or maybe it’s not.
Truthfully, as you envision this blessed payback you know that in reality you will likely never have the opportunity, or the guts, to be so cruel to your child. As the fog of sleep slowly lifts, you change your tactic and instead of dreaming of the day when you can exact sweet revenge, you instead begin praying with an urgency that you haven’t felt or experienced in a long, long time.
Lord, give this boy a child just like him some day.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go have another cup of coffee. After all, I was up before the sun this morning…
Made me laugh out loud! Remember when you were young and I longed to take a Sunday afternoon nap? For some reason you and Brett thought that was wrong. You made as much noise as possible and made sure that you came in our bedroom to ask a million questions. I would finally give up and get up! Maybe I prayed for sweet revenge! I am pretty sure that as I stumbled out of my bed, I mumbled theses words . “Just wait, my dear. Someday you will have a child who will make sure you never get to sleep in or nap”.
Kiss my little pirates this morning! Sleep is overrated!
Like I said…payback is a beast. 🙂
As my 14-yr old son moans every morning at 6:15 as I welcome him into a new day of glorious beginnings, “Mom, …(unintelligible mumblings here)… you PLAGUE me!!” I promptly reply, “It’s my job” and then blast him with the overhead light in his room. Oh yes, Kelli, your day too is coming….
Hehehe….someday my job description will be more fun won’t it. 🙂
This made me laugh…because it was you and not me! 🙂 Yep, as a teenager you will get to ‘plague’ him.
Dave just did a post on other things we have ‘done’ to our boys. This one involves a driving contract. http://raisingmen.net/2011/12/the-driving-contract/
I LOVE that, Karen! I think I’m going to print it out and file it away as it hit me the other day that we are over half way to having a driver in our house.
*heave*
I’ll need to get your address so my kids can send you a thank you letter when we pull that puppy out. 🙂
🙂
But, really ….to encourage you…..we LOVED having kids who could drive. Like other areas of life they were ready to accept the responsibility. Scary? occasionally, but it certainly made life easier!
BWA HA HA HA HA HA! I love it! You may want to watch that prayer though. You could be cursing the wonderful woman who marries him. Wink, wink.
I hereby apologize in advance to my future daughter-in-law. She’s going to have to take one for the team in this case…
I had an aunt who used to keep a jar of marbles in the freezer, and when her teens wouldn’t get out of bed, she would just lift a corner of the covers and pour the marbles into bed with them. The best part is, since marbles roll to wherever the mattress is depressed, you can’t escape them, no matter how hard you try!! 🙂
HA. HA. HA.
That is brilliant on so many different levels. Your aunt sounds awesome! (I’m just glad she wasn’t my mom. 🙂 )
Happy birthday to your little boy :). I just stumbled on your blog from a random Facebook post. I can relate to many of your posts — My family is much like yours, only two or three years behind. We are coming up on our eighth wedding anniversary. We have three kids — boy, girl, boy, ages 7, 4, and 2. My youngest is also my snuggliest and smallest child. And I home school in PJs and drive the dreaded minivan (My husband calls it “the white log”.). One little deviation — my twin sister is the professional writer. I am a geologist by education. Anyway, I enjoy your posts and hope to read more.
Thanks Liz! It’s nice to “meet” you! Us minivan moms need to unite. Power in numbers, right?! 🙂
Haha! Yes, power in numbers! 🙂 My husband and I always swore we would never have a minivan. Funny how that worked out.