Friday, September 22, 2006

The Bards Will Sing of This

We are trying to instill the trait of bravery in the little man of the house. To that end, Malachi has been dubbed “Bug-Killer.” His habit, upon seeing a bug or anything that could possibly even remotely resemble a bug, is to scream in terror and run away yelling, “A bug, a bug!” So we are teaching him instead to try to squish bugs or at the very least to fearlessly shout at them to go back to their own homes outside.

Today the kids were in Lily’s room playing when I heard a commotion emitting from that room: “Eeeee! A bug, a bug!” Malachi came running to me to insure that I had heard the distressing news. Thinking it was only a piece of fuzz or perhaps a fruit fly or some such thing, I handed him a tissue and told him to go squish the bug. When I followed him into the room a few seconds later to see if he had conquered the lint I saw Lily standing safely behind Malachi as he was bravely trying to squish a spider closely resembling Shelob in size and grossness. In spite of Malachi’s valiant attempts, the spider had evaded the squishing so I grabbed the tissue and delivered the killing stroke. Then we all trouped to the bathroom and flushed the descendant of Shelob, tissue and all, down the toilet.

What bravery my little bug-killer showed! Now that I’m done laughing about it I’m ready to burst with pride. This is how boys become men- by learning to squish bugs.

1 comment:

Gabrielle said...

Oh, Adiel, that's great. I'm so proud of your little man.