Apparently we all suck
Last night our eldest daughter couldn't find her socks for school. The same socks she had been running around the house flicking her younger sister with, and that her younger sister had hidden.
Getting her bag ready the night before school is laudable, but also a ruseshe does it in order to make twenty trips up and down the stairsafterwe have asked her to go to bed. If we don't remind her about the time, she would very likely stay up all nightquietly watching old TV shows on the internet.
Anyway. She couldn't find the socks, and no amount of “we'll ask your sister in the morning” was going to do. She had entered that peculiar arms deal where a minor infraction escalated to full-on thermonuclear war in a matter of moments. It didn't help that my other half started slamming iPads shut, and talking at her very quickly indeed (she does that when she's angryif you've seen “Still Crazy”, Astrid isn't a million miles away).
I wandered into the warzone kitchen, to help broker some kind of peace deal. Miss Twelve saw my arrival as the impending end of the argument, turned on her heal, and muttered “you all suck!” under her breath.“What?”“This whole family sucks.“And off she went, stomping up the stairs.
I got on with the washing upmostly to avoid my other half, who was so angry she could probably have spontaneously combusted anything she brushed against. I didn't even dare ask if she wanted a cup of tea.
I found the socks fifteen minutes later, hidden under the duvet of our youngest daughter, and gave them back to her sister. I had worried the search might wake her up, but it transpired that a bulldozer and/or a UAV stike might not have stirred her from whatever dream she was snoring her way through.
In receipt of the socks, all I got from was a loud insistence that there were not where I had found them, and no sign of any apology whatsoever.
Because I suck, obviously.