The kids were having one of their classic arguments, “Move, you’re in my chair!” Classic.
The squatter-kid then has to defend how long they’ve been in a relationship with the chair to justify their position on it.
These methods of defense could come in physical form–holding one or both legs outright to keep a safe distance from the person posing a threat to their seating.
Sometimes this draws “Not touching, can’t get mad” antics from their rival. It could come in verbal form–“I’ve been sitting here since like forever.” “I’ve been sitting here since before you had a shower.” “I’ve been sitting here since before I was born when I was in Mom’s stomach and she sat here.” (Good one) Or it could come by way of mental tactics and I do mean mental. This could be a staring contest, one or both parties pretending they can’t hear or see the imposter blocking the view from one or more screens which is almost always the cause for the eruption in the first place.
I declared a chair evacuation as all good Moms do right before screaming into a pillow and running directly through the drywall.
This achieved two things; 1) the fight would be put on hold, 2) Hanna would fold the laundry and Ellie would collect the garbage.
Ellie was destroyed over having to gather the garbage from around the house and wanted to be assigned a buddy to walk with. No.
Hanna folded knowing she got the easier job that she secretly loves and let’s face it, she could walk into any GAP store and topple even the most skilled folders off the top of the t-shirt pile and land herself a management position. She’s that good.
Somehow, Ellie’s complaints got Greg telling the kids about how great they have it and as all conversations about how lucky we are end in, “Do you know there are kids dying from Ebola?”
“What is that?”
We talked about the severity of the disease, how you can die from becoming completely dehydrated and it gave us the opportunity to push for more and thorough hand washing which was long overdue anyway.
Basically, the kids walked away saying, “You can poop to death?”
I’m not sure that’s the exact cause of death but it scared both kids enough to want to share the chair.
