Vernie Lynn DeMille

 

“If You Give Your Child a Chore”

By Vernie Lynn DeMille

If you ask your child to pick up the floor he’s going to find a good deal of dog hair on it.

Finding the dog hair will remind him that he has three dogs nearby who might want to play.

When they respond to his invitation to play he will begin to throw the items he just picked up into the corners of the room for them to chase.

As the dogs chase the trash there’s a good chance they will run through the recently folded laundry that is sitting on the couch.

After they’ve destroyed the piles of folded laundry, your daughter (who folded all that laundry) will probably begin to yell at your son who will have suddenly returned to picking trash up off the floor in an attempt to look innocent.

Your daughter will not believe this ploy.

She will throw the trash that caused the dogs to run through her laundry back at your son.

The dogs will chase it a second time and your son will complain about how your daughter is messing up the house.

She will then complain about how the dogs are making the house dirty.

Hearing that the dogs are dirty, your son will make the decision to abandon picking up the floor and will decide to give each dog a bath.

In your bathtub.

20 minutes before guests arrive.

When he has finished, your living room will still be littered with junk, your tub will be filled with a Pomeranian’s worth of hair, and the air will be perfumed with the gentle fragrance of Eau de Wet Dog.

When you calmly remind your son that the living room floor is still a mess and he needs to finish his job he will look at you blankly and say “I was supposed to clean the floor?”