Chip Bed

Yesterday my husband stayed home sick. I won't go into the gore and horror of it, but let's just leave it at "he wasn't feeling his best". And for him to stay home, that was indicative that an intense bug had taken control.

However, the PBA and I still had the preschool to take care of, so we headed off, as we do every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.

They didn't mention their dad all day (sorry, Sweetie, but it's true). But on the way home, he came to mind and they asked me how he was. To be honest, I didn't know; I'd messaged him but had not heard back. I wasn't sure how to take that...either he was a) asleep; b) too sick to respond; or c) had suddenly made a miraculous recovery and was so busy at work that he didn't have time to reply. I was hoping for option c)...for many reasons, but mostly because it was Halloween and it's the daddy's job to walk the neighborhood with the hooligans, I mean, kiddos. It's the mommy's job to stay inside where it's nice and warm and visit with her friends. I wanted to stick with the original role-assignments.

The PBA, however, had an option d) on the list of possibilities for their father:

9 yo: "What do you think dad's been doing all day?"

11yo: "I think he's been lying around eating chips."

9yo: "You do? Yeah...probably."

11yo: "I think when we get home, we'll catch him lying in bed, watching TV and eating chips."

9yo: "Yeah, and drinking Coke. There are probably Coke cans all over the floor and under the bed."

Me: "So you think he wanted a day off from everything...to just lie around and not do anything? So he called in sick? And then just ate chips and drank Coke?"

9yo: "Oh yeah...that's right."

Me: "Hmmm....that doesn't sound right to me. I doubt that's true. He does like all those things, but I don't think he would call in sick for that."

Plus I knew for a fact that we didn’t have Coke or chips in the house; if he’d lied and wasn’t really sick, I knew he had to eat some other kind of junk food. Yes, that was my problem with what the PBA were saying…not the possibility of overt lying on the part of my husband…that he wouldn’t be able to eat what they speculated he would.

So here's where the conversation took a rather twisted turn...the very next comment:

9yo: "Yeah, when we get home, I think we'll find him in bed eating chips. And when you pull back the covers, you'll see that the bed is full of chip pieces, and you'll say, 'Oh thank you, Honey! Just what I've always wanted! A chip bed!'"

Me: "You really think that's what I'd say if I found out that daddy had lied to us about being sick and then got chips all over the bed?"

9yo: "Oh yes!

I'm really not sure where I went wrong with that one, but perhaps it was all the fish I ate when I was pregnant with him. I thought eating fish was supposed to help with brain development in unborn babies, but perhaps they don’t mean the fried fish at Long John Silver's…

Editor’s Note: Just to clarify, it does not escape me that I, too, took a weird turn at the end of this writing…maybe the 9yo is more like his mother than previously thought...