Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Dinner 1 Dinner 2 Dinner 3 Dinner 4
"I thought Mrs. Henderson said you were going to have some math problems every night."
"Math is stupid mom, I don't want to do it."
"Boy, turn off that game and break out your books, it doesn't take you that long, if you get it done before dinner I'll let you keep playing your game before you go to bed."
"But Mama."
"Mama has spoken Shawn. Do as I say. I'm going to go put the casserole in right now, and it'll take about an hour to cook, and I know that if you try you can be done with your work in a thirty minutes so there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be done by dinner, and we'll both be a lot happier."
"Mom, I'm going to go outside and play on the swings."
"Ok, Andre, come back in when it starts getting dark."
"How come he gets to play?"
"Cause he already did his homework, if you did like him, you could be playing now, but you decided to do your playing before you did your work. And now it's time for you to do your work."
Shawn stomped his way into the kitchen to get his books.
"Don't you stomp in this house, Shawn, you'll earn yourself a whuppin'." I followed Shawn into the kitchen and found him sitting at the table leaning over his books looking like a poster child for the unjustly imprisoned and the wrongly accused.
I pulled the aluminum foil off of the casserole dish on the stove, set the oven at 350 degrees and slid it onto the rack.
"Would you rather have peas or string beans with dinner?" Shawn made a face.
"Neither."
"Well it's going to be one or the other so you might as well pick the one you like better."
"Peas."
"Fine choice."