You know how possessive kids can be about THEIR STUFF, right?
“Don’t touch my hair brush!”
“Get out of my room!”
“Which one of you weasels stole my car keys?”
Okay, so that last one was me, but you moms know what I’m talking about. Your kid finds a broken yoyo at the park, sneaks it back to her bedroom, and then guards this precious treasure like Gollum protecting the One Ring. It’s just a fact of kid life.
So, my seven year old, Joe, could hardly be blamed for hiding his very important, utterly irreplaceable, extremely cheap digital watch in my bedroom one afternoon.
Greedy siblings or piratical looters would never think to look there. Of course, he didn’t tell me about the secret location either. How could I be trusted with such valuable intelligence? I’d probably crack under torture and spill the beans. But I did, in fact, discover the watch’s presence as I lay down to go to sleep that night. The alarm (a surprisingly loud “pa-DING!” for such a cheap piece of equipment) erupted from the watch about 10 minutes after I turned out my bedside lamp.
11:03 – Pa-DING!
Ugh. Joe must have left his stupid watch in the living room. I have to remind him to keep it in his room if he’s not going to wear it. Who sets an alarm for 11:03 at night? What a weirdo.
12:03 – Pa-DING!
Seriously? Another alarm? I guess I should shut my bedroom door or I’ll be listening to that thing all night.
Me (kicking a chair leg and waking my husband in the process): OUCH!
Him: QUIET! I’M TRYING TO SLEEP!
Me: SO AM I!!!
Okay, the door is shut. Peace and quiet at last.
1:03 – Pa-DING!
Oh, good God. No. That sound CAN’T be coming from inside my room, can it??? Joe wouldn’t leave his watch in here. It’s too important. PLEASE let me have imagined it. Let it be a random phone notification and not an hourly freaking alarm hidden somewhere in my pitch black room. Let it be a hallucination! A robotic mouse. A passing spaceship. ANYTHING but that freaking watch PLEASE.
2:03 – Pa-DING!
O. M. G.
Me (poking my husband): Honey, do you hear that?
Him: Gluhhhhrzzzzzz.
I guess he doesn’t hear it. Men.
3:03 – Pa-DING!
FINE! I will drag myself out of bed and look for the watch.
Me (switching on my phone flashlight, stepping on the dog, not finding anything): 🤬
Him: TURN THAT LIGHT OFF! I’M TRYING TO SLEEP!
Me: 🤬🤬🤬🤬 SO AM I!!!!!
4:03 – Pa-DING!
If that boy can’t find this watch the MOMENT he wakes up, I’m going to a hotel, and I’m not coming back.
5:03 – Pa-DING!
Should I even attempt falling back asleep at this point? Maybe I should just….zzzzzzz.
6:03 – Pa-DING!
Shoot me.
7:03 – Pa-DING!
When I asked my son the next morning if he knew where his watch was, he trotted right into my room, shimmied under the bed, and retrieved the offending timepiece.
He explained that he’d left it there for safekeeping. Did he know that he’d set the watch to ding every single hour? Nope. Did he know how to deactivate the mental torture device? Nope, but some random button-pushing on his part yielded the desired result.
As much as I had wanted to throttle him during the throes of my nocturnal torment, I wasn’t that mad in the morning.
Kids don’t have much authority or control when they’re little, so I can see how staking their claim to a broken yoyo or a cheap wristwatch might feel like a matter of great importance. In the end, Joe was right not to tell me about the secret location of his precious treasure. Had those piratical looters shown up and started asking tough questions, I would have given it up before you could say “pa-DING!”
