A young writer in residence - or, the handwriting on the wall

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on February 24, 2012


Recently, I learned that we have a budding writer in our home.  You may think, generously, “Oh, it’s in the blood.”  Or perhaps you saw the article that mentioned my eldest son winning the annual speech contest held by the generous Rotary Club of Warrenton.  Maybe you remember my children’s poetry when this paper ran the Kids’ Page or that my eldest daughter won the “Why I Love Warrenton” contest in the student category years ago in The Warrenton Lifestyle Magazine. Perhaps you heard my daughters give their speeches at their respective graduation ceremonies from Fauquier High School in 2008 and in 2010, or my middle son’s speech before becoming President of Warrenton Middle School’s student council.

That traditional kind of writing is not what I’m talking about.  My new writer in residence has found a far more interesting medium.  You know how some things are revealed to you only when you see the handwriting on the wall?  That’s what I’m talking about.  Literally.

Last weekend, because we are a super fun loving and partying sort of family, my husband worked with me on assembling some electronics.  That’s to help me keep in touch with my “inner engineer.”

Last weekend also being an extra-long weekend, we decided to do some fun things, such as have the children remove wall marks with that amazing Mr. Clean Eraser.  This sort of household activity can be lots of fun, especially if you don’t frequently overdose your children on things popularly construed to be fun, like going to the movies or to parties.

Hopefully, you know I am writing tongue-in-cheek.  Of course, we enjoyed the glorious sunshine at Rady Park on Saturday.  We brought in lunch and considered driving to the movies, but chose to watch one at home, where everyone could snuggle or lounge as necessary.  My husband worked on projects with each of the children too.

That’s when the handwriting on the wall came to me as clearly as if it had been written on the wall.  It was, actually.  Naturally, everyone denied doing it.  No matter.  Lately, my mothering has degenerated to tyranny.  It’s not “innocent until proven guilty” around here.  They’re all guilty.  I know it.  I live with them, remember?

The writer at large had written in teeny, tiny letters.  One phrase, on a bathroom door said, “God bless America, my home sweet home.”  My discovery coincided with President’s Day Weekend.  I should be proud.  All of this was compressed to a size that could easily be hidden by an adult thumb.  Does this mean I keep my children under my thumb, or that I suppress patriotic writing?  Not at all.

This may surprise you, but we have loads of paper in the house.  We have whiteboards and computers too.  We even have grains of rice, if someone insists on specializing in tiny writing.  Any of these are acceptable places for writing, but apparently, they are just not as appealing as the walls and the doors. 

In another “inconspicuous” spot behind yet another bathroom door, there is a “Hello, is anybody home?” penciled there.  This one, I learned from the young writer, was inspired and done years ago after watching “Beauty and the Beast.”  At least for that one, I got a confession.

For the patriotic musing, I simply chose the most likely suspect – someone with a track record for wall-writing, someone with a similar handwriting, someone who had attended a school where this song was sung every morning just after the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.  That’s the candidate who gets my vote. They can have a taste of democracy when they leave home.  Hopefully, their new home will have more accommodating walls.

It reminds me of a school day years ago, when only the two youngest were at home with me.  I heard alarms of, “Mom!  Mom!  The Baby is writing on the wall!”  I dashed upstairs.  (I weighed less then.)  I had a habit of referring to the youngest child as “The Baby” even when that child was toddling about and speaking.  Everybody’s had a turn at being The Baby.

I saw that, indeed, The Baby had made a huge swirling scribble, right on the bedroom wall.  I shouted at The Baby to arrest any further artistic impulses he might have.  I turned to thank the older child for alerting me.  There she stood, with pencil in guilty hand, and an entire mural on the wall ahead of her.  There was a little house, the straight line for the garden and a few flowers popping up.  The picture was complete with that charmingly childish sun shining its warm and loving rays straight down onto the scene.

I shouted that child’s name out, in full, as written on the birth certificate.  “You said The Baby was writing on the wall, but you were doing it too!” 

She shrugged her helpless little shoulders and widened her innocent, four-year-old eyes.  “Well, The Baby was writing on the wall!  Then, I had to do it too.”

There is no longer a baby in this house.  The writer, however, apparently still lurks among us.

A Rough and Rocky Start to the School Year

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, September 2, 2011

Yesterday, I earned a dollar. It was from my own child. He is six years old.

I have offered to drive any children who miss the morning bus – specifically, my own offspring - to school. Just because I’m posing as a writer, doesn’t mean I can afford to work for nothing. I have to charge something. When you don’t want a behavior to be repeated, you have to inflict some form of pain or discomfort on the offending party. This pain varies from person to person. For some, it is being deprived of the next good thing, whether it is a social activity, some form of junk food, or just plain old money.

I have threatened to charge a dollar per ride. So far, I have earned three dollars. Two are from a repeat customer. You guessed it; the little guy is my big spender.

The first week of school was rough, by anyone’s standards. There were some unsettling things, like an earthquake on the second day of school, leading to an evacuation that brought students home without their backpacks or belongings. Midweek was a day off for students so officials could ensure facilities were safe. By the weekend, there was the threat of a hurricane. Not your typical first week.

In light of this, I should be a little patient with my children and make allowances, but look where patience got me. I don’t even get an allowance either.

The first week concluded with me driving the two youngest to school, and me with $ 2 more in my pocket. It served as an effective deterrent for the one child. The next morning, she was dressed and ready, had her backpack on, with the loaded lunch bag clamped to her bag, and breakfast well settled into her belly, all with about 35 minutes to spare. Could she just go ahead and walk up the hill, now, she wanted to know. She didn’t want to run the risk of running late. Meanwhile, the little brother was stumbling about in his pajamas, claiming he just needed to stretch out on the sofa for a few more minutes.

She, on the other hand, was not going to engage in this sort of risky behavior. She was not going to endanger her dollar. She was giving herself enough time, half an hour, to cover the space of five houses. I believe that even if she were suddenly transformed into a mollusk along the way, she would have had enough time to snail up the hill and make it back for a quick goodbye hug. But still, it’s noble. She learned. Unfortunately, the other child did not.

The whole problem with the other child is that I don’t understand his psychology. He would rather pay the dollar and have the extra time with Mom. Huh?

As flattering as it is to have people I don’t yet know come up and introduce themselves to me and tell me how much they love reading this column (thank you, Ginger Schrank for your sweet, kind words!), it is far more flattering when it comes from someone who actually has to live with you and put up with all of your shortcomings. See that picture of mine? It’s always smiling. See me? I’m not.

Sometimes I yell. I have to, because I live with children, and I don’t have that effortless philosophy of people who can get children to do whatever they need them to do by speaking in hushed tones all the time. The only times I used hushed tones are when I have gone hoarse with yelling. Frankly, this hissing-whisper-control seems like the skill set possessed by a snake charmer. The other reason that I have to yell is because no one has purchased me that bullhorn or even the megaphone yet. (My husband keeps threatening to buy one for me to improve the efficiency of our household.)

So, I am overall terribly flattered that this child is having some separation anxiety. It’s sick and selfish, I know. But he’s my baby. Who else is going to be interested in sticking by my side? And how long will it last, anyway?

It’s young children who actually like the company of their parents. I don’t want to paint older children out to be some sort of evil villains. If you have them, then you will already know that for yourselves. Just kidding. Older children are the ones who have discovered other things and other people who are more entertaining than we are, which is a little bruising to our egos.

And I guess his separation anxiety is understandable. It’s a long day to be away. We spent the last two years traveling and going to school together – the first year in Reston, and last year to Vint Hill. No wonder this waving goodbye to board the giant yellow school bus is a strange model for him.
 He’s still small and he’s still young. If I blink my eyes, it will be gone. And so will he.

Then, I will be the one peeling out the dollars to try to get in a little bonding time. I think I’ll stop charging a fee for now.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N at the end of summertime

Published in the Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on August 19, 2011

Who said summer could be over? I’ve barely nicked our list of summer projects. True, we can walk through the garage now, and there have been sightings of our basement floor, but where did the time go?

Sunday night we returned from a quick, three-day getaway into the mountains. We’ve barely begun our summer fun. How can it be time for school?


We had relatives visit for eleven days, made a single day trip to New Jersey for my nephew’s graduation and my cousin’s 50th birthday, took the kids to the swimming pool at the WARF several times, drove into DC to the Natural History Museum, and saw Luray Caverns again, but did I ever play a game of chess with my sons? Did I get around to a simple sewing project with my youngest daughter? Have I read a book?

This year, I did things backwards. Since I normally do things so slowly or late that it may as well be backwards, this should have approached the domain of the double negative and set me straight, but it hasn’t. I took the children school supply shopping early. (Of course, you read that column.) With that out of the way, I could start thinking about planning a vacation.

With the threat of summer ebbing and school washing in, we had only one weekend available. Unfortunately, our eldest daughter had signed up for the GRE on that one magical weekend, so it was going to be a lonely trip: just the seven of us and our shelter dog.

I realized then that planning a vacation actually takes a little time, effort, and of course, planning. I’ve even heard about businesses that do this for you! You’d have to wonder about our sense of family vacations. We have a few preferences: It needs to be within driving distance. Please don’t make it too physically taxing. I’m in no shape to be hiking up some mountain, and I’m a little nervous of water, so don’t expect me to be snorkeling around somewhere. It should have some educational value beyond learning that I’m in no shape to be hiking or snorkeling. It should include museum and/or zoo visits. If I get to be the driver to our lovely, life-long learning vacation resort, we will also intensify the experience by listening to an audio book in the car.

Think of normal life as the ant that is outdoors enjoying the sunshine, and vacation as being the ant enjoying the sunshine under a magnifying glass. Perhaps there is a reason we keep our vacations short. Maybe standardized testing is less painful than a vacation with the Ribeiro Family.

I’m thinking that our vacations worked better when the children were closer to one age group, instead of being sprawled across the decades from entering elementary school to legal adults. Isn’t it irritating how children insist upon growing up? The true beauty of childhood is that it takes so very little to please a child. A young child can be happy with the smallest things: kicking pebbles together, rolling around and laughing on the carpet, or trying to catch toads and butterflies. These things can delight the heart of a small child.

We traveled with three teenagers.

These teens had wanted to go to the beach. Or was it everyone that was in a rebellious mood? They had already seen and remembered, in excruciating detail, our visit several years ago to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. I tried to remind them about our compressed, 40-hour vacation to Virginia Beach last year, which, incidentally, is perhaps the best vacation we’ve taken. If we applied the same logic, they had already “been there, done that” with the sand and the waves. Why should they want to go again (and again)? Apparently, the flavor of the beach does not wear out the way the flavor of a museum does. The older, more sophisticated, and more jaded hearts are a little harder to delight.

Some of the more mutinous of our group awoke late on the morning of departure, and hadn’t packed a single thing for themselves. By contrast, the two youngest had been packed up for a week. (We will not hold it against the six-year-old that he forgot to pack any shirts. After all, he had packed everything else that mattered: a toothbrush, underwear, shorts, pajamas, and his stuffed dinosaur and a pocket-sized fighter jet.)

The older children approached my amazing vacation plans with the enthusiasm of criminals heading to the gallows. Come to think of it, they were acting like criminals that should have been heading to the gallows. One thoughtful soul helpfully offered, an hour before departure, to stay at home and finish summer assignments. This new plan could lighten the load on the car, open up more space for baggage, alleviate concerns about pet care, and reduce our carbon footprint.

I offered my carbon footprint.

Remind me on our next vacation to the mountains to bring along a bucket of sand and a pail of water for those who are missing the beach.

Valentine’s Day and Tough Love

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, February 11, 2011
Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Hopefully you’re a great planner and have everything lined up. Otherwise, you can show your sweetheart, with a few clicks, that wonderful gizmo you are ordering on Valentine’s Day itself. Disclaimer: this is not the recommended method.


There are so many forms and degrees of love, but I’ve decided to go with a tougher topic. I know you’ve grown accustomed to some hardcore, hard-nosed journalism here every week, so I don’t want to disappoint you, especially before the big day, V-Day. Valentine’s Day is all about love, but that can come in as many varieties as there are types of chocolates, flavored coffees, or kids’ cereal. Let’s be decisive and restrict ourselves to one kind: tough love.


Tough love is so called because it is not pleasant to receive, and is equally unpleasant to mete out to your beloved child. Life, I believe is built on a very pay-now or pay-later system. Either way, you’re going to have to pay, so the only decision is whether to put it off for later or to deal with it head-on. While I am a confirmed and avowed procrastinator in most things, when it comes to my children, I prefer the pay now method.


About a month ago, our doorbell rang in the early hours of the night. A father was desperately trying to collect the last hundred dollars to bail out his child from jail. Ordinarily I don’t have much cash on hand – I know, I know, I REALLY need to put together an emergency kit, with cash in it, for crises like these – but oddly enough, I had taken exactly that amount of extra cash out of the bank that very day.


I know the man who was at my door. He promised to return the money in two days as soon as he got paid. My husband says I’m gullible, and while it’s true, I had no expectations of ever seeing that cash again. Isn’t that how we’re supposed to lend things? So far, my expectations have not been disappointed. Neither have I, to be honest. Certainly, I haven’t skipped any meals or opted out of filling the gas tank because of it.


I’m more amenable to this type of solicitation than people pitching pesticide programs on my doorstep. This distraught dad offered me his cell phone number. I said no. I trust him. Obviously, he knows where we live. That’s good enough. I have no attachment to that cash. If it never comes back, it’s okay.


I’m going to tread carefully, because I might hurt some people’s feelings, specifically, three. Considering that might account for a significant chunk of my readership, I’ll try to target only those thirty toes.


I’m also going to guard myself because I have children of my own. We never know what life holds for us around the corner, and we don’t really have the power to control any being other than ourselves, no matter how necessary it might feel. Forget about controlling others; sometimes we can barely control ourselves: Infancy, toddler-hood, early childhood, the ‘tweens, the teens years, young adulthood, midlife, and old age seem to stand out as phases of life that pose such difficulty.


Tomorrow my child might shame me. Then you can toss out my advice along with the paper. Until then, please allow me to pontificate.


Bringing up children is all about carefully watching that bubbling pot. You have to keep adjusting the temperature, stirring things up a bit, and occasionally suffering a burn or two. You can’t turn off the heat, though, or it will just sit there, bored and stagnating. At times you have to sweeten things; other times require bitter herbs. Should you adopt a hands-off philosophy (let the pot do the cooking), you will enjoy brief, carefree moments followed by the risk of having a big, scorched, mess. At overflow, the mess tends to be more public than pleasant.


I don’t know all the details of this parenting fiasco. Granted, some children are harder to rein in than others. There is the occasional child who proves immune to parental guidance and correction. Did this child bypass time-outs in the formative years? Did s/he exempt the exam on the section that says certain actions have negative consequences? Or was this child genetically hard-wired to inflict headaches and heartaches upon the parents? I don’t know. I doubt many people do. The Nurture versus Nature battle rages on.


Was it all those summers when the child was technically old enough to be left alone all day, and was, that might have played a role in this degenerate behavior? Was it the result of marital problems in the parents? Was it lack of spiritual counsel and moral guidance? Was it the influence of peers that outweighed the influence of parenting? The questions can be fired more rapidly than the answers.


Next week, we’ll tackle the other twenty toes. It’s an incredulous thought, but I suspect that neither party mentioned reads this column. Do me a favor. Just this once, don’t tip them off.

Marie Antoinette And The Triple Amputee

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, 12/17/2010 and in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, 10/11/2005.


With Christmas just days away, I’ve been thinking a lot about toys. Well, not a lot, but for the past five minutes, at least. I know I’ve had months to think about, if not act upon, it. After all, the Christmas shopping season officially began on July 5th. It used to be August 1st, but faced too much competition with the Halloween displays that now go up concurrently with the back-to-school specials. Next week, look for Valentine’s displays.


Are my kids the only ones who continue playing with toys they have destroyed?


When my eldest daughter received a porcelain doll for her fifth birthday, both she and the younger daughter stood with mouths agape, marveling at this beautiful object. Being only slightly over two-and-a-half, the younger one was allowed to touch it only under severe supervision by the elder.


A year later, the elder received a second, larger porcelain doll from my parents. This was to be the start of a collection. (My eldest son started a light bulb collection at age three; in practical terms, it was all the same to me. Those were his admired fragile objects.)


My daughter tends to be overly generous, and typically regrets it later. Soon after she had neatened the new doll’s dress, she looked at her younger sister who was still months away from turning four. She carefully brought down the first doll. Yes, the very one that had been dressed, redressed, and kept so carefully for an entire year. “Here,” she said gravely, “now that I have a new doll, you can have this one.”


The little sister looked up in wonder at the generosity of this benevolent being. She smiled, hugged it gently, cradled it, and held it to the light. It was a moment to remember, a Kodak moment if ever you saw one. And then…the doorbell rang.


It doesn’t matter how many times you tell the kids that the Boogey Man could be lurking outside the door, that he would be just the audacious type to ring the doorbell before swooping them out into the dark of night. No, tell them fifty times, and still, when the doorbell rings they all hurtle forward, jockeying to be the first to get it.


Our three-and-a-half year old daughter had been the proud owner of that coveted porcelain doll for about two minutes when the doorbell beckoned. There were the usual shouts of “I’ll get it! No! I’ll get it!” when we heard a “chink” followed by a dampened thud. I don’t remember whose eyes and mouths were rounder, but there it was…the doll had been decapitated.


That look of regret passed over the eyes of the six-year-old. You could see she was reconsidering, just a bit too late in this case. Each of them, considering the doll to be her own, was crushed, even more than the doll itself.


We thought of gluing the doll, but in the meantime, she was dubbed “Marie Antoinette.” Oddly enough, the younger continued to play with the rest of the doll, putting its stockings, shoes, and dress on and off. If there are any psychologists out there, kindly do not call me. I can get all the advice I want from the grocery store bag-persons who have, in the past, psychoanalyzed my child seated in the cart. Dressing a headless doll might seem a bit macabre, but you must agree that, minus the head, it is loads easier for small hands to accomplish.


Then, because we laughed our heads off (pun absolutely and disgustingly intended), they had to know who Marie Antoinette was, so we checked out books and read about her. About a year later, we finally did hot-melt-glue the head back on, and while the doll was never restored to its original condition, it continued to be quite a conversation piece.


I’ve noticed that the third installment of the Toy Story movie is out, just in time for the Christmas theater experience. I remember when the first one came out. When my middle son was two (a decade ago), he was thrilled to realize that the big Woody and Buzz Lightyear dolls (sorry, “action figure” is the masculine term required here) were associated with the movie. He would stand at the head of the stairs, shout “To-itty and B’yond!” and repeatedly toss the hard plastic Buzz figure in attempts at aviation. Buzz did not fare very well.


What was left of this doll was just the trunk and one complete arm. As a testament to the engineers, its wings and voice still worked. The helmet, head, and amputated limbs were stored safely away, just in case, even though it was beyond the scope of our usual panacea, hot-melt-glue. The kid continued to play with the Buzz torso. What is wrong with my children?


This year, to simplify things, I plan to give my children a cardboard box with bubble wrap, Styrofoam peanuts, sticks, and dirt and water. That’s what kids really like to play with. If you’re interested, I’ll make you a package too. For you, just $ 19.99, of course.

Tackle the Toilet: Take the Plunge! (PG-13)

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, February 20th, 2009

This is it. I’ve had it. I’ve completely had it.

Before I begin my diatribe, I will spend a final sane moment and warn you that today’s column is NOT for the young reader. This column is rated PG-13: Pretty Gross, even for 13-year-olds. (Now that I have perked up the interest of those who are too young to ordinarily be interested in what I have to say, I will begin.)

Someone has habitually been breaking into our home. The doors and windows, as flimsy as they are, show no signs of forced entry. No alarms go off. Our dog never makes a racket. If either dog or alarm were operational, we could catch the villain in the act, but s/he always gets away.

Yet, I am certain that someone has been entering our home.

How do I know this? I have evidence, that’s how. It is a very nasty sort of evidence, but the intruder always leaves something behind. Man or woman, boy or girl, s/he always leaves the same crappy calling card.  It is a clogged toilet.

Why not pin the blame on a member of my own household, you say? I see. You, too, are a simple-minded thinker like me, because I had initially come to the same conclusion. Simple minds are so easily distracted by the obvious.

We are happily and simple-mindedly going about our own business. Sometimes this business involves the lifting of the toilet seat cover, either for personal use, or to facilitate the planting of a young-one, pants down, for a little visit until they call to be wiped when…simulate music from Jaws here…we discover that Something is rotten in the Town of Warrenton. And it’s right there, in the toilet bowl! Paper is puckered into the little hole that apparently just couldn’t chug, chug, chug this stuff away, no matter how much it thought it could or how much we wished it would. There is a disturbing lack of water in the bowl, and an even more disturbing proliferation of solid material.

Back when I thought like a simpleton, I would see this and fume. “All right! Who clogged the toilet this time?”

In a household of this size, it is hard to keep track of who has gone, or when, or in which particular bathroom. So, when I bellow like a beached beluga, I get one of two responses. The most common response is no response. When you sound like an animal in your own home, people refuse to condone that type of behavior and simply ignore you. Sadly, this is a system of which I was a big proponent. It works wonders on shrieking two-year-olds, but is even more maddening when applied on a full-grown adult with a bloated bladder.

The other response I’m used to hearing is a series of sweet and innocent-sounding “Not me’s.” Of course, it couldn’t be you, with your angelic face. I carried you within my own body for nine months, where you proceeding to squash and smash my bladder. I carried you and cared for you from the earliest times of your infancy, when you controlled my every waking moment. You controlled when or whether I was allowed to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. And, no, it couldn’t be you, who as a toddler followed me everywhere, and made me suffer your constant company even when I needed a few moments of privacy with the toilet.

You have caused me nothing but suffering in the toilet department all your life, so of course, it couldn’t be you. That’s too obvious! It must be Mystery Man on the Go…again…and again who breaks into our house, feels the urge, begins to purge, and either forgets to flush or is unsuccessful in doing so. He has to be the one who ends up clogging the toilet.

I don’t know a lot about toilets, but I have learned how to plunge them. Being the sort of person who is interested in life-long education and an educated youth, I have trained everyone in the double-digit age range in our house in this simple plunging exercise.

Our home was a new construction, so our American Standard toilets are 6.o Lpf or 1.6 gpf. I’m no do-it-yourselfer, and I know very little about toilets, (except that there should be a bowlful of clear water in them before each use and after each flush). Regardless, I will venture to say that 6.0 Lpf means each flush consists of 6.0 liters of water, which is the same as 1.6 gallons being tossed at whatever you can send its way. I don’t know what the “old” flushing standard was in the good old days when we didn’t care about our food, our water, our planet, or whether the pollutants we left behind could make a tear trickle down from the eye of a weathered Native American man on commercial television in the 1970’s.

How much water does the new flushing standard save? I’m not sure. I suspect the data is skewed, because some people in our house routinely flush multiple times after a single visit, desperately hoping that the next 1.6 gallons will do the trick that the earlier, lethargic one could not.

Once upon a time, when I was a kinder, gentler person, I would have sighed after the chorus of “not-me’s.” I would have picked up the trusty implement and taken the plunge. I had resigned myself to the fate of ACP (anonymous clog plunging) forever, and wrote it off as one of those petty or unpleasant tasks that falls upon the sagging shoulders of the happy homemaker.

But then, something snapped. Perhaps it was being forty-two years old, and still having to routinely perform ACP throughout the house. Perhaps I had achieved and exceeded my lifelong ACP quota at a relatively early age. Or, perhaps, like stores who shower the nth customer, I had performed an ACP for the nth and final time, and now it was time to pass along the baton (or plunger) of knowledge.

At any rate, one fine day I decided my plunging services, like me, were exhausted. I allowed a clogged toilet to fester, because no one would ‘fess up. (Naturally not. We all realize it was Mystery Man.) I realize that this has not been a pleasant thought. But I assure you, the sight is far worse than the thought. If you were just enjoying a nice snack or a drink, I apologize.

Day One. I announce that I have retired from ACP. Some other heroic, altruistic soul is going to have to step up to the plate (or bowl) and do the duty, even though it had not been his or her fault. No response.

Day Two. Would the guilty party please just go and plunge the thing, because that bathroom has become entirely unusable. No response.

Day Three. Assemble the children. (It was close to Christmas at the time – perhaps that might have explained the little present?) “Hey, guys, you know how in some families people choose names to give each other presents?” Yes, yes – their eyes light up. To this I actually get a response, and it is in the affirmative. I sense excitement and a keen desire to participate. All people of plunging age have their names written down, and the youngest child in the house drew a name. “Here,” I say, “you get plunging duty on this one.” It was not a pleasant task, but I must say that I admire the fortitude with which the unlucky child approached the task – with plunger in hand, he almost looked like a soldier going off to war.

Yesterday, it happened again. So at night, I allowed each potential plunger to draw lots. It was very Biblical, I thought – just like when Jonah was on the ship and no one knew why they were having horrible weather problems, or when they needed a quick replacement for Judas Iscariot’s twelfth disciple position. Each paper had “Freebird” written on it, save but one. That one had the dreaded “Clogger” written on it. The children hesitatingly drew their lots. A sudden cloud of doubt fell around the child who pulled “Clogger.” The others viewed him with a sense of sympathy and doubt. (His name had been pulled on the Christmas name-drawing as well.)

Experience is a great teacher, and this one thing I have learned: you don’t have to wait three days before drawing names. I just wish I had learned this technique years and years ago.