THE PRODICAL SON

Saturday mornings as you know I spend cleaning the house, when TLW (The Little Woman) is working. One of the things I do is clear out the kitchen table and chairs and sweep, vacuum the floor then wash it. I take pride in a clean smelling house and floors particularly.

After a hard morning of cleaning, I go up into my office to do some work, and suddenly the phone rings. It is #2 Son, on my wife’s side.



Me: “Yellow?”
“Hey!”
Me: “Hey.”
“I have good news for you, I’ll be coming home today, just for a little while, then I have to get back. My friend is driving down and I thought I’d stop by.”
Me: “Oh! Today? What time do you go back?”
“I don’t know.”
Me: “You know your mother is working today.”
“Oh, that sucks. See you later.”
Me: “Today?”
“Yup”



All I could think of was the clean house, how hard I worked to make it so, and the fact that now I would be picking up. (Not true, turned out the only thing he left me was a bottle of soda on the table.)

Around 4:45, I notice no one has come, and think, hemmmm… maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he won’t show up, just then, the front door burst open and sure enough #2 has arrived!

Behind him is a small entourage of friends and associates, who proudly present themselves in my kitchen. One of the brotherhood tries to pet Happy and she lets him know that he would need an appointment to do that, that she would let it go this time with just a stern warning.





Out comes all the frozen pizza, and a feast of microwave perfection is under way, assigning frozen slices that were quickly heated up to each member of the Society for the Prevention of Hunger!

Happy is agitated, and is off in the entranceway, a sinister look coupled with her usual look of ‘I did something wrong,’ on her pretty face.

Realizing that she is still doing her job, I go over to console and reassure her that everything is ok. But she is still looking down, somewhat tense. I turn to get her a treat and I see it! There on my just cleaned kitchen floor is lake cadmium, as large and yellow a lake I have ever seen. Bigger than Lake Michigan! She had peed from the excitement of all the strangers.

Trying to keep one’s cool when tired and taken from a serene place, is very difficult, but I do it. Out once again comes the mop, paper towels and cleaning fluids to clean up the lake.

There is a moral in this story boys and girls. When your children go off to college, is a good time to move. I recommend moving as opposed to changing the locks because you can get pretty far away with a move, changing your name and assuming another identity, while changing the locks just means they will knock and knock and knock, and you will hear it.