My family\u00a0recently\u00a0completed an extended negotiation over exactly when bedtime should occur. The negotiated agreement\u00a0was that\u00a0the boys could stay up an hour later on school nights, but that bedtime\u00a0meant lights out and in bed.<\/p>\n
Last night, as I was flipping back and forth between\u00a0The Player and the Giants\/Redskins game, my spidey senses started tingling.\u00a0Both boys were in bed, but I had a feeling that one of them\u00a0wasn’t actually attempting to sleep.<\/p>\n
I pondered the problem for a while, trying to find some\u00a0path that didn’t\u00a0end with me giving a lecture.<\/p>\n
At last,\u00a0inspiration struck.\u00a0I went to the kitchen and\u00a0cooked up\u00a0a big hot buttery batch of popcorn.\u00a0Holding the bowl in one\u00a0hand and a salt shaker in the other, I pushed\u00a0into my oldest’s bedroom.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, he had his light on and was reading.<\/p>\n
“Hey,” I said.<\/p>\n
He jumped, reached for the light, then realized it was too late and settled for just closing the book. “Hey.”<\/p>\n
I salted the popcorn and stuffed a large handful into my mouth.<\/p>\n
“Is that popcorn?” he asked.<\/p>\n
“Yep. Tastes really good. Hot and buttery. Can you smell it?”<\/p>\n
“Um. . . Can I have some?”<\/p>\n
“Nah. You were up past your bedtime.”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
I wandered farther into the room, spreading the delicious hot smell of corn, salt, and melted butter. \u00a0“We had an agreement about when lights would be out.”<\/p>\n
His eyes tracked the popcorn. “Da-ad.”<\/p>\n
“Lights out.”<\/p>\n
He clicked off the light. “Now can I have some?”<\/p>\n
“Nope.” I went to the door. “Sweet dreams.”<\/p>\n
“You can’t do that!”<\/p>\n
“Yes I can. Tomorrow night, I want the lights out when they’re supposed to be out. You understand?”<\/p>\n
He fell back on his bed. “Yes.”<\/p>\n
“Sleep tight.”<\/p>\n
I closed the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As far as punishments go, I’m pretty proud of this one. We’ll see how well it works!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-GK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}