Poor Mom

Poor Mom

“Jeff, what did I tell you to do!” Mom said, sharply from the den doorway.

Jeff looked up from his toy trucks, then, as innocent as an angel, he said, “I don’t remember anything.”

Mom was torn, as usual. Sometimes she thought he did forget things a lot. She had even looked into classes for ten-year-old’s in memory retention, not that she found any. Everyone said ten-year-old’s were footloose and fancy free, they expected them to forget anything that wasn’t fun. But, Jeff wasn’t like that.

Jeff was a very serious ten-year-old. Sometimes he actually talked about things like he was much older, always serious things to him. It was like his mind was reeling at a hundred miles an hour and could only stop to fit in new information.

“Ah, I asked you to clean up your room, remember?”

“Oh, OK. I’ll do it,” he turned back to his trucks. Mom knew he had probably already forgotten what she said, he was lost in other thoughts. Trying to be optimistic, and not to cry... Mom went back to the kitchen. She would clean his room for him later when he was at his piano lessons.

Jeff was still in his room, and yes he was thinking about other things. He was wondering how long it would take for a bag of ice cubes to melt. He had snuck ice cream up to his room in a bag of ice cubes and then forgotten the ice cubes would melt. Now he had to sneak a bag of probably melted ice cubes past Mom. He forgot there was an upstairs bathroom where he could empty the bag in the sink... he was basically your normal, scatterbrained ten year old, he was just really, really good at it...

Poor Mom...