Confessionals

My seven-year-old daughter, the apple of my eye, the perfect child, has been misbehaving.  She came to us in a bout of guilt-induced tears last night to tell us so.

Her heavy heart was lifted some when she got these tidbits off her chest:  she'd embellished a photograph from her school writing folder of her sister stooping over a bucket of shells at the beach by adding poop coming from her behind. She'd drawn pictures of hairy butts and things during free time at school.  She'd watched Chowder even though she wasn't supposed to.  She'd thought the drawings were funny at the time, but now apparently she just feels weird.  She said she'd tried to wipe off the markered poop but it just smeared and looked that much worse.

It is very hard indeed to keep a straight face when your daughter confesses her biggest sins and they all center around potty humor.    Hairy butts, really?  Well, I guess she ought to feel weird!  We had to leave the table several times because the hits just kept on coming and at 40 years of age, I guess none of us is to immune to a good poop story once in a while.

These little confessionals of hers have become a habit lately, surfacing every month or so when her laundry list of misbehaviors get the best of her.  It seems to me she's figured out a rather crafty way to do something wrong and not really get gravely punished for it.  I have to marvel at exactly how deeply Catholicism is ingrained within her DNA!

Anyway, we've caught on to her.  After last night's confessional, she'll be serving a punishment of no tv for the foreseeable future.  I don't care too much about the drawings, though we tried to stress the inappropriateness of the subject matter.  But she is in trouble for watching "Chowder" on Cartoon Network (a perfectly awful little cartoon that she has no business watching) when she'd been specifically told not to do so.

Meanwhile, I need to work on my poker face because it's so hard not to laugh at this sort of stuff.  In ten years, when she's coming to me about more adult matters, I know I'll want the times back when the worst thing on her conscience were some hairy butt drawings that sent me from the table in a fit of private laughter.