Quiet is never good. We pray for quiet but the truth is that it doesn’t exist in a normal situation. Quiet is suspicious. Quiet says that something is broken, someone is hurt, or electronics are hypnotizing them.

My resident gangster in training, Don Threeto, has been awfully quiet these days but I’m still onto her tricks. She is adapting her game as all good masterminds will do. The main reason is that Lady Bug is becoming more mobile these days and is bulking up on anything food she can scavenge. Like the skinny dude on the prison block, she is plotting her rise to power. She eats whatever she can find and has a goal. Forging herself in the fire of pain by falling off of furniture, running into walls, and dropping things on her toes. Lady Bug may not match Don Threeto in cleverness but she can squint her eyes and swing wildly with the best of them. Her scream is nothing to be messed with and she can butt-scoot down stairs fast enough to ignite flannel pajamas. Another six months and we could have a full blown turf war on our hands.

The psychological games continue with near constant references to killing things.

Example: Prima says, “I’m a beautiful rainbow.”

Threeto replies with, “I hate rainbows and I kill rainbows.”

I ask the obvious question of, “How can you kill a rainbow?”

She looks me straight in the eye and says, “I know a guy.”

Jesus kid… You are really putting me at a crossroads here. Do I accept that organized crime may be your “thing” and buy all of the classic gangster movies and CSI collections as educational material? Do I surround you with Care Bears and little Buddha statues? I hope something changes soon.

I thought she might be softening a few weeks ago. She was acting timid and sweet. I checked her temperature and sure enough it was slightly elevated. I took her to the walk-in clinic and as soon as the co-pay was paid she sprang back to life. That didn’t explain the temperature being elevated but some part of a parent boils at the sudden disappearance of all symptoms once you arrive a the clinic.

The nurse asks, “So what are you in here for today?”

I snapped back a little hastily, “Who the hell knows? Nothing I guess. She was acting like a catatonic lobotomy patient thirty minutes ago and now she is Pippy F’n Longstockings on crack. You tell me nurse lady and make it worth twenty five bucks.” At which point the wide eyed nurse says, “okkkaaayy” and checks her patient’s blood pressure while minimizing eye contact with me.

The doctor comes into the room and checks things out anyway and finds an ear infection so I didn’t feel totally duped. However, I did find the source of the dramatization by Don Threeto. The doctor was trying to negotiate the strep test and was about to bargain with a reward when Threeto said, “Do you have suckers?”

Boom. There is was. I just paid twenty five dollars for suckers. She was totally cured and back to the old tricks in no time.

That night she told me that she slapped a mermaid. I asked, “Why?” She just smiled. I can only assume she owed her money or was working the wrong reef? Maybe it was for luring in sailors and disrupting boat shipments of black market goods? Lady Bug better not be taking notes.

Then again, maybe I have the whole competition situation wrong and the Don is training “The Muscle”. Lady Bug is toughening herself through hazing practices such as eating multiple containers of lip gloss and re-usable Barbie stickers. She rubs pizza sauce directly in her own eyes despite an obvious understanding that it will hurt. She is on track to be a real badass.

Completely unrelated (for the moment) I am taking resumes for an attorney to handle family “business”.

So if any parents have children who “know a guy”. This one is for you. You’re welcome.

-Underdaddy to the rescue.