Tom’s Garage

I just had to write this, if only for posterity. Abby has two very bad and [slightly] dangerous habits when she retreats to her room. 1) If her brother is chasing her she’ll run into her room and slam her door shut, with the full weight of her tiny body behind it. This is a potential finger-removing activity for Ben. 2) She’ll close her door and push everything she thinks she owns up against it so no one can get in. Both activities are simply not allowed in our house and she has been continually warned that one day she might lose her door altogether. Today she provided the fateful piece of straw.

The whole episode happened without my knowledge. I was on a conference call when Kerri marched into The Garage and began going through my tool box. She apparently found what she was looking for and darted back inside. A few minutes later she came out (I was still on the phone) and whispered, “she lost her door”. I didn’t fully grok what Kerri was telling me because my attention was split but I found out shortly afterwards that Kerri had taken a hammer and slotted screwdriver to remove Abby’s door from its hinges. Apparently Abs had completely blocked entry again (after a warning just minutes before) so Kerri had to follow through on her initial threat.

The whole thing is kinda funny because I always figured it would be me reacting to a narrowly missed removal of Ben’s fingers that would cause Abby’s door to be taken away. But Kerri did it. And, let’s face it, the whole thing is funny because we removed her bloody door! It now sits in the kitchen against a wall and there it will stay for three days.

So today marks the day that we followed through on the craziest threat we’ve ever made. Do you understand this properly? We removed her door! What’s next? Board up her windows? Wrap chicken wire around her bed? I feel like a nutcase. But strangely, I don’t know what other option we had and I’m comfy with the decision. I’m certain, though, that I have more than one screw loose in having devised such a “penalty” at all.

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This entry was posted by tom on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.