Mistaken Identity

I’m pretty sure they were framed.

I know these two. They can’t even spell “selfish”. Well, okay, one of them can, but with her five-year-old phonetics, it reads more like Sell Fish. She’s so cute. And so’s the little one.

I think it was just an overwhelming case of circumstantial evidence. I know how this works—I was a mother once. You hear a few raised voices in the other room and suddenly your blood pressure shoots up. Then before you can say, “Stop that fighting!” somebody’s in time-out and somebody else is, too.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the whole affair go scot free, floating away from the crime scene, their own reputations unbesmirched. It’s a crime, I tell ya. Everybody’s fooled by those happy-go-lucky types.

Everyone except me. I know their MO.  See, I’m kind of like a Grandma MacGyver. And believe you me, I’m qualified. After years of experience raising my own children, I’m both confused and suspicious.

So today my daughter handed over the innocent looking ringleaders of yesterday’s skirmish and told me to take them to my house. Like I could control them. Dreamer.

“The girls were fighting over them,” she alleged, implicating my precious granddaughters without even a cross examination. Well, actually there was an examination and the evidence made her cross. But I had a sneaky feeling the real suspects were the two who couldn’t make eye contact with me.

Reluctantly, I wrestled them out to the truck, tucked them in safely behind my seat, turned on the A/C so we’d all be comfy, and pulled out of the driveway. That’s when the trouble started.

Jostling and shoving, bumping into each other and getting in my face, I realized suddenly those two oddballs had pulled out of their restraints. And somehow, there they were, up in the front seat with me!  I pushed them back so I could safely see around them, but I was outnumbered. Bobbing and lurching, they blocked my view of the windows and mirrors and I nearly drove off the road before miraculously I grabbed them both and put them in their place.

“Aha!” I announced to . . . no one in particular. “So it was you two all along!”  Feeling pretty proud of cracking this case, I could hardly wait to tell my daughter. However, I restrained myself—I wasn’t born yesterday, ya know.

Finally at home, I put those two in timeout where they eventually calmed down. I just had to deflate their supersized egos a little. It wasn’t pretty, but I had no choice.

See, I’m soft and tough.

Hand me a couple of miscreant balloons and I can make ‘em regret they ever wished anybody a happy birthday.

Party animals.