... that's what you find when you're vacuuming the pews of the church in preparation for another weekly Sunday-sacrament-meeting-snack-fest (i.e. mormon church service). Did I say pews? More like Pee-yew!s. Since we were understaffed cleaning the church this morning, and since there was a pack of parent-less children running around the building, I decided it might actually make my job easier if I could put the little buggers to work. Not only that, but it would also serve to restore a measure of equilibrium to the cosmic imbalance of justice in the universe since it was these raisin-chewing, goldfish-munching kids who were the pew-contaminating perpetrators in the first place. I figured if I baited the hook with enough feigned enthusiasm as well as an implied willingness to grant them temporary 'honorary grown-up status' for complying, they would bite. After all, it had always worked on my five younger slaves, I mean... siblings. Kids are all about that kind of stuff, right?"Hey guys!!!!!! How would you like to help me clean the chapel?!?!?!?!"
PCP1: "Um, we're playing a game."
PCP2: "Cleaning doesn't sound like much fun."
PCP3: ...
"Dang," I thought bemusedly. "Kids are a lot smarter these days than they used to be."
Luckily, I remembered having once seen a movie about a woman who was notorious for her uncanny ability to make child laborers out of unwilling children. I decided to try a different strategy.
"Unless... we make it into a game." I said.
UWC1: "What kind of game?"
UWC2: "Yeah, what kind of game?"
UWC3: ...
"Well," I explained, "all of these hymnbooks need to be gathered into a pile so I can vacuum the cracker crumbs out of the pews. What if we have a race to see who can collect the most hymnbooks from off the pews?"
CL1: "O.K!"
CL2: "That sounds like fun!"
CL3: ... (At this point I wondered if maybe this little guy was too young to have learned very many words.)
"On your marks, get set, GO!!!"
And go they did. Brilliant. Thank you Mary Poppins.
Everything was going swimmingly until one of the girls discovered a small abandoned stuffed cat on a chair. Suddenly my cadre of laborers turned into nothing but a group of la'ying-down-on-the-jo'borers.
LDOTJ3: "kiTTycAT?" (He speaks!)
LDOTJ1: "I think I'll take her home with me."
LDOTJ2: "Why do you get to take her home?"
Time for more quick thinking.
LDOTJ3: "sOloMoN?"
"Now just hold on there. Let's not do anything rash... I'm guessing the kitty's owner is probably really missing her right now. Do you think maybe we should put the kitty in the lost and found in case the owner comes looking for her?"
LDOTJ1: "Good idea!"
LDOTJ2: "Let's do it!"
LDOTJ3: "hiMBOok?"
"That reminds me... we should to get back to work! I mean... back to our game!"
CL1: "I'm going to win!"
CL2: "Nuh-uh, I'm going to win!"
CL3: "uNICeF?"
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6 comments:
This confession shocks me! I mean, after all the times you berated me for causing you to be my own personal slave at BYU, and here you were a master of slavery yourself! For shame!
Did you get the permission of Chantal, Ben and Michael to write about them in your blog? You should have. And did they know you were going to refer to them as children?
You also could have done a better job of disguising their identities. The lack of vocabulary made it pretty obvious that child #3 was really Michael.
What was it... a teaspoon of sugar to help the medicine go down?
Haha that is really funny I am glad you were able to blog about it for us!
You are quite the tricky little taskmaster.
This killed me... and my friend who is sitting here with a stitch in her side. Thanks for the laugh... and the worth-while break between exams.
Happy to oblige. Good luck with those exams!
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