So a while ago I started pulling treats out of my kids' ears. You know the old routine where you palm a coin or a candy of some sort while you fiddle with their ear and then, as if by magic, you show them the treat that was in your hand all along? My boy has caught onto the routine, and if he hasn’t, he’s skeptical at best. The girl is a full blown buyer at this point. I keep a stack of chocolates, the kind hotels give you on your pillow at turn down service time, here at the rock pile for those times when the kiddiewinks come to visit me. It’s become sort of our little deal with the girl often asking me to pull a treat or a quarter out of her ear.

We were up in Vancouver not too long ago and we stopped to watch one of those street entertainers work his magic for us. He was okay at best but then he started pulling stuff out of Maile’s hair and she was all a giggle. At one point during the show, Jackson disappeared something of the magicians at which point the magician demanded it back. The girl, clever as she is, knew that the magician, no doubt, would pull the item from the boy’s hair. So she took her hands and rubbed them ferociously through the boy’s hair knowing that she’d find the missing object. That one action drew the loudest chuckle of the performance.

So Sunday night I took the kids to the local pizza joint where I escalated the whole pulling something from the kids’ ears a little too far. You see, I was drinking beer and the wifeage wasn’t there, which is usually the reason for any of my many spectacular downfalls. Anyway, at one point I palmed the pepper shaker fiddled with Maile’s backside and then asked her why she had a pepper shaker in her butt. Both kids fell on the floor laughing. Which made me laugh. The three of us made quite a scene, no doubt. I can only imagine how this thing will escalate and what might befall me when any of this gets back to the wifeage. Anyway, thought you’d like to know.

Johnny GoFast