~by Haley Lynn Gray~
One of my children left the freezer door open today. Another left the door to the attic open.
I’ve concluded this is deliberate. They’re testing us — checking whether we’re paying attention, and how fast their father’s head can rotate on his shoulders.
What other explanation is there? Perhaps the house was too warm and the freezer seemed the obvious remedy. Perhaps it was a science experiment, an attempt to construct Maxwell’s Demon in our kitchen. Perhaps their bedrooms needed additional ventilation from the attic.
Nobody has confessed.
They are driving me crazy. It’s not a long drive.
A representative sample
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an isolated incident.
My son once asked me, with a beautiful smile, to make him a paper aeroplane. The paper in question was poster board — the sort his older brother was using for a school project. I obliged, and crafted something genuinely impressive. It flew beautifully, right into a houseplant. Large paper aeroplanes and plants do not mix.
On another evening, within the space of four hours, my younger daughter fitted 52 gummy bears into her mouth while her youngest brother staged a temper tantrum of considerable ambition.
We also have a rabbit, a chinchilla, three cats and two aquariums, and there was a week when I was syringe-feeding the rabbit. The four-legged residents cause me markedly less trouble than the two-legged ones.
Why I’m telling you this
Because a great deal of business writing is relentlessly competent, and running a business while raising children is not a relentlessly competent experience.
Some days you close a deal. Some days you defrost a freezer nobody meant to defrost, then take a client call from a cupboard because it’s the quietest room in the house.
Both are real. Anyone presenting only the first version is editing.
The testing, incidentally, never entirely stops — the doors just get metaphorical. The children get older and check whether the rules still hold. Employees do it too, in a politer register.
Mostly the answer is the same: notice, say something, don’t lose your temper about a freezer.
Though I reserve the right to be annoyed about the attic.
