Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Tale of the Grapes and Trucks

My kids are starting a raisin factory. And it's all my fault. Here is what you can do to insure that you never have this happen at your home:

Do not serve grapes at the same time that you give your kids small semi trucks and trailers.

You don't think that would happen at your house? Don't fool yourself: I thought the same thing until it happened to me. You know, it's one of those things that you think always happens to the other guy. And then it happens to you and you understand at last what it feels like to be the "other guy."

One delightful day, I found two of the cutest little matchbox semi trucks at a thrift store. I decided to buy them and use them as a prize for the kids.

After helping and obeying cheerfully while preparing for supper and picking up the house, I set the little trucks next to the kids' plates. Within inches of their plates sat a bowl of juicy, purple grapes.

Landon and Janae both were tickled pink: the trucks were a big hit. So were the grapes -- my kids LOVE grapes and we seem to rarely have them.

Unfortunately, over the next few days, the semi trailers were opened and the contents were revealed. Each trailer could fit about 3-4 grapes comfortably but I can imagine that if the grape paid well, they could fit close to 9 or 10 fugitive refugee grapes.

These foreign little grapes were then trucked all over the house and examined and ate at random times in random places. The rest of the grapes... well, I have yet to find those.

The funny thing is: my kids have always disliked raisins. Why they embarked on their own entrepreneur raisin factory, is beyond me.

The moral of the story: do a content check on all small vehicles, all closed compartments and tally all food coming into your home. And never say, "that couldn't happen to me."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back when there were only about 2 grandchildren of our local family, I hid jelly beans (an equal amount in both the living room and dining room. The jb's were hunted by two of them, independently. A few years(?) later, I spied a black jelly bean on the woodwork mop board in the corner next to the cold air duct. I was appalled at my housekeeping!

A good grape story. When one of Toby's employees was teaching school, he had a student who put his grapes in the microwave at lunch time. As they burned, they gave off a most unusual, horrid, pungant smell.

Jean said...

Maybe you'll find the rest of the grapes after sufficient time to really turn them to raisins. Or may be the truck drivers really ate them up.