Monday, March 1, 2010

Smacked with the Humble Stick (and the Ugly Stick for that matter)

While my wife would valiantly argue against me, I feel like I've had my fair share of beatings from the Ugly Stick.

However, that is not the subject of this post.

I here today to talk about its lesser-known cousin, the Humble Stick.

This is the stick that sneaks up on you when you're getting to comfortable in your own abilities, when you start getting feelings of superiority or when you start thinking the world owes you for being such an awesome human being.

Needless to say, this stick and I have a standing appointment every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 4 p.m. MST.

So, as my mom would say, "What does this have to do with the price of eggs?"

Ah, yes. The point.

I have one.

Last week, I was getting ready to go to work, when my daughter and I had the following discussion:

Daughter: (Batting her enormous eyelashes at me) "What are you doing, daddy?"

Me: "I'm getting ready to go to work."

Daughter: "I want to go to work too."

Me: (Trying not to get too excited that my daughter is finally loosening the choke hold she has on her obsession with her mother) "I would love to take you to work, but I can't."

At this point, she turned to my wife and said, "I want to go to work with Daddy."

So, my wife (the peacemaker in our home) calmly started to explain that because they had to go to the store today, that maybe they could make a stop at my work.

But, she only got out the part about the store before my daughter squealed and started jumping up and down, yelling "Yea! Yea! The store!"

I should have known that my daughter just wanted to get out of the house. She's already a brilliant manipulator (especially for a 2-year-old) because she was willing to exploit her relationship with me to get her what she wanted.

I'm a little nervous about her teenage years at this point. I'm betting she'll have most of the boys at her school wrapped around her pinky.

2 comments:

Shorty said...

I'm approaching the teen years as we speak. My son's 12th bday will be here in May. I think you're ahead of the game as long as you can always identify the manipulation. What the kids don't realize is that we've played these games, too, so we're one step ahead! : )

politicchic6 said...

Well, to be fair to your daughter... the store has TONS of cool stuff... what cool stuff do you have at work? Exactly. She's smart.