Naughty Day started when my daughter
asked me why it was that you always had to be good. I answered that you did not
have to. What’s more sometimes you have to be naughty in order to be able to
distinguish between being good and being naughty. Of course she did not
understand. She did understand, however, when I announced that we were going to
spend the weekend without Mom, just the three of us, and one of the days was
going to be Naughty Day.
My children could not be waiting
for it. They told everyone that they were facing a day when they could do
whatever they wanted. Teachers in the nursery, parents and people in the church
walked up to me to ask what it was all about as my children had been talking
about how good it was going to be with Daddy. They were not required to behave
well and obey Daddy’s orders, as that was what Naughty Day was about.
The day finally arrived; they
jumped into the bed next to me, and said that we could start by staying in PJs
all day. :) I indeed felt the urge
to lay down two important rules as, according to the penal law, I am their
father. “Rule One” was that no act against life was allowed which means
anything that can hurt or cause pain to anybody. So if my little prince had
been asking my little princess to jump off the balcony that would have
definitely been covered by Rule One, thus it could not be performed. “Rule Two”
was that, though they could do everything and anything they wanted, they had to
face the consequences of their acts. After discussing the rules we jointly
hugged each other and let the 24-hour-long anarchy start.
My lad started by collecting all
his four-wheeled vehicles in one box, placing the box in the top of the
staircase and launching a ton of cars accompanied by shouting “Hoooraaaay”. My
gal wanted to eat as much ice-cream as she could instead of the fact that it
was winter. She even wanted to bring the ice-cream with herself to the
restroom. Though I can imagine your face now, my dearest reader, I was not
against her idea as it was not violating the two rules.
The cute innocence in the story is
that, for them, being naughty means to violate all the everyday rules set up by
us, adults. It was an incredible experience. I could not do anything but laugh
with them at the committed “mustn’t dos”. We baked cookies and the flour spilt
on the floor was used as canvas for drawing by my daughter. For lunch they had
chocolate and for dinner some meat by itself. Milk was drunk from the carton;
Marmalade was eaten from the jar with a huge spoon. Joking around and jumping
up from the table was the norm for eating. Drawing was continued further by
drawing on the forehead, face and tongue. Well we had some sensible actions too,
like baking chestnut and creating chestnut dummies.
So being naughty, for them, was not
really about doing something bad but about doing something that might annoy me.
It is something that I do not let them do because it is uncomfortable for me or
something that they do not know the consequence of.
By the way talking about consequence…
In the afternoon my boy stepped on a toy while half-insanely dancing to the
loud music and started crying because of his aching foot. Daddy, of course,
felt sorry for him but he knew what had happened and why it had happened. Then
we started tidying the place as Mommy had told Poppy that everything could be
done until everything was tidied up when she got home. Rule Two, regulating
consequences, let the children know that all the toys had to be put away.
Reminiscing, I think this was the
point when the perfect day started to show its flaws. The peak point was when
my girl vomited all the ice-cream mixed with chocolate that she had had all day
(relax, I was easy with consequences at this point, and did not make my girl
clean the car up). Then as a consequence of the playing all afternoon instead
of having a rest, we were so tired that we could barely stay with eyes open
when we arrived home. Of course as a perfect closing for the day the bath-tub
had to be filled up to its brim to leave room for splashing out as much water
as it was possible.
Imagine the rest: when I entered
the bathroom with their PJs in my hand, I witnessed my naked children cleaning
up all the water they had splashed out. They were so unskilled and
unexperienced handling the rod of the mop to make the consequence of the
desired game disappear. Then my daughter looked into my eyes and said:
‘Poppy, it’s not that good at all being naughty. We have discussed that it was enough and we are going to be good from tomorrow on.’
I just hugged together the two
little innocent guys fast but I guess they could see it in my eyes that I was
moved.
With this tiny bit of goodness I
would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
P.S.: Their mother is, by the way, the
Superwoman. She always says that I describe her as a crone, but hereby I state,
that she is not! :)
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