My Son - Evil Genius

1) The Setup:

It was a day like any other. My son and I were playing trains in the basement, which is to say Cieran was playing trains and I was sitting on the couch watching him, struggling against the overwhelming temptation to curl up and take a nap.

After a while, playing trains grew dull, and Cieran begin running up and down the basement corridor, pushing his toy pushchair ahead of him. It was something he had done a hundred times before over the past few weeks, and nothing seemed to be different this time. Cieran made several uneventful circuits before he accidentally bumped into the door to the laundry room. I say accidentally, but with hindsight I realize it was nothing of the sort. He backed up a few paces and rammed into the door again, and then a third time, just in case Daddy still hadn't got the message. Daddy had.

``Okay Cieran,'' I said wearily. ``You can push your cart in there too.'' After all, the laundry room offered another ten yards or so of pushchair freeway, and while the concrete floor and unfinished walls would necessitate a certain degree of adult supervision, it would be worth it in order to keep playtime on an even keel for a little longer.

Into the laundry room we went---Cieran, Daddy and the pushchair. Cieran ran around for several minutes, maintaining the innocent facade for just long enough to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, before embarking on the next phase of his plan.

On his third or fourth tour of the laundry room, Cieran cast a casual glance in the direction of a large plastic sack containing packets of potato chips. Chips are a controlled substance in our household, and forbidden to all family members under the age of two who haven't been eating their dinner lately. As such, they are greatly desired by those very same family members. This explains why chips are hidden in a portion of the basement rarely frequented by toddlers. However, Cieran was no slouch, and he had established the precise location of the chips on a brief, previous visit, filing the information away for a more opportune moment.

After glancing at the sack of chips, Cieran went on his way, and nothing further happened. On his next pass a minute later, Cieran stared rather longer at the chips and then at Daddy. Daddy for his part steadfastly ignored him, choosing instead to make a detailed study of a patch of wall in the opposite corner of the room. Seeing that subtlety was getting him nowhere, Cieran came and stood right in front of me, jumping up and down and pulling on my pantleg until he finally had my full attention.

2) The Heist:

I turned to face him. Without saying a word, Cieran strolled over to the door and casually closed it, shutting us both inside the laundry room. He turned towards me and gave me a sly look, nodded meaningfully in the direction of the sack of chips, then towards the closed door, and finally looked back at me, a mischievous glint in his eye.

Despite my best efforts, it was all too obvious what this twenty-one-month-old criminal mastermind had planned. With the door closed, Mommy would never know. As long as we were quick about it, and everybody kept his mouth shut, nobody would be any the wiser. I was frankly amazed, and not a little disappointed, to discover that my son has such a shrewd understanding of the way things worked in our family and of the direction in which authority flowed.

While I watched, mouth agape, Cieran sauntered over to the bags of chips, carefully rummaged through the selection, and pulled out his favourite variety: name brand cheesy puffs, fortified with monosodium glutamate and yellow dye number six. He struggled for several moments trying to open the packet, first with his hands, then with his teeth, and finally by flinging it against a distant wall, all to no avail. At last, in desperation he turned to me.

``Help'' said Cieran, as we had taught him to do in an emergency. ``Chips. Yes. Help.'' He cocked his head to one side and smiled sweetly up at me.

What could I do? After so much meticulous planning and preparation on his part, who was I to thwart him at the last hurdle. I caved instantly, took the packet from my son, and carefully tugged open a small gap at one corner, foolishly reasoning that this would limit the number of chips he could extract.

``Here,'' I said, handing the bag of chips to Cieran, pretending not to notice the look of triumpth in his eyes.

3) The Kick-Back:

``Thankyou.'' said Cieran giving me his most winning smile.

Miss Manners would have been proud. ``Remember,'' she would surely say, ``always be polite, even when the teller hands over the money at gunpoint.'' Good manners cost nothing, of course, and they might even reduce your sentence.

With the chip packet's defences breeched, Cieran lost no time in plunging his fingers into the small hole I had made and ripping the bag wide open.
A split second later, the first cheesy puff was on its way into his mouth.

Now, Cieran is no fool, as you have probably gathered. As he stood munching on his hard won chips, I could see his mind quickly working all the angles. Daddy was in deep, but there was still a chance he could talk his way out of it and cut a deal, leaving his son to take the blame. Halfway through his second chip, Cieran pulled the cheesy puff back out of his mouth and offered the remaining half to me. Normally I would think twice about accepting half chewed, pre-moistened chips, even coming from my son, but as I have already mentioned these were cheesy puffs, and that yellow dye number six can be pretty enticing.

So, I took the chip, making me an accessory in the eyes of the law, and more importantly, in the eyes of Mommy. I looked the chip over, and discovered that it was only mildly soggy and more or less edible. What the heck, I ate it. And the next one, and the next, until between us we had finished off the packet.

4) The Cover Up:

``Hands, Daddy. Hands!'' said Cieran, thrusting two horrid, orange, sticky things in my direction. This puzzled me for a long moment. Cieran is never normally one to worry about being sticky/gooey/slimy/filthy all the way from head to toe. In fact, Cieran is living proof that, as my mother would say, boys are basically `noise with dirt on them'.

At last the penny dropped. Of course we would need to wash Cieran's hands. And give his face a good scrubbing too. Even this might not be enough to fool Mommy but we would have to chance it. We trooped off to the bathroom adjoining the laundry room and set to work. To say that Cieran normally hates having his face washed would be an understatement of gargantuan proportions. In this respect at least, he is like every other little boy under the age of twenty. However, on this occasion, he bore the indignity with great stoicism. Every master criminal must make sacrifices now and then to make the big score.

All that remained was to stuff the empty chip packet behind a pile of boxes, where it wouldn't be noticed until the next time we moved house. A quick peek through the laundry room door showed the coast was clear, and we were quickly back in the other room playing trains again as if nothing had happened.

P.S. Even criminal masterminds are not infallible. Two days later, my wife was puzzled to find a toy pushchair lying abandoned in the laundry room, surrounded by a light dusting of bright orange crumbs. An investigtion is proceeding, but at the time of writing, no arrests have been made.