Lately, I’ve been making a concerted effort to have the kids do the dishes instead of me.\u00a0I’m working from a time-honored tradition: whoever doesn’t help prepare the meal helps clean up after it.<\/p>\n
The other day, my youngest son found himself facing a large steel pot of rather nasty burnt spaghetti sauce.<\/p>\n
“I think I’m just gonna let this one soak,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Letting it soak doesn’t help anything,” I said. “It’s just a code.”<\/p>\n
“What?”<\/p>\n
I smiled. “It means you’re going to\u00a0leave it for someone else to clean.”<\/p>\n
“No it doesn’t!”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, it really does.”<\/p>\n
“But Mom says it all the time!”<\/p>\n
I raised my eyebrows at him.<\/p>\n
He laughed nervously. “I’m so asking Mom about this!”<\/p>\n
I crossed my arms, and he strode purposefully into the living room to repeat my claim. My wife laughed. “Yeah, that’s what it means.”<\/p>\n
“But. . . but you say it all the. . .”<\/p>\n
I’ll give him credit. He managed to stop himself before he finished the sentence.<\/p>\n
“So does your father,” she said sternly.<\/p>\n
He staggered back into the kitchen, eyes wide, mouth open, clearly caught between outrage and laughter. He put his hands on his hips in a spot-on (if unintentional) imitation of his mother. “I’m so letting this soak.”<\/p>\n
“Sorry,” I said. “That code only works for adults.”<\/p>\n
“No way! That means you guys can leave things to soak, and I’m stuck cleaning them!”<\/p>\n
He catches on quick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In which a 12-year old boy is introduced to one of the great mysteries of the kitchen. . . and discovers a hidden lack of fairness in his life. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[123,122,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-Iy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","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=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}