Anne and the Amathist Broach–The Boy Version

Do any of you remember that chapter from Anne of Green Gables about Marilla’s Amathist broach? Well The Hunky Hubby and I were privy to the real life version in our home this week, except of course the tale was boy style and instead of jewlery…it was coffee creamer.

The Hunky Hubby went to his place at the table and found a mess. His bottle of vanilla bean coffee creamer sitting right next to a large smeary foodstain at the edge of the table. It was obvious that someone had spilled the creamer and then proceeded to lick up the evidence in short order. You could even see the streaks of bubbly saliva clearly maring the surface of the dinning room table.

And so the inquiries began. But both Sweet Boy#2 and Sweet Boy#3 adamently denied spilling and licking the creamer. Each time we would interview one of them we were sure that this boy was telling the truth. And then on the the next boy who seemed to be truthful as well. What to do, what to do? Someone was lying, but who. The boys were certain that their older brother had done it…or Daddy. But Sweet Boy#1 had left for school at 6:45am and Daddy was not a suspect for obvious reasons. Finally I saw a sticky substance smeared all over Sweet Boy#3’s mouth…I resorted to a painful crime solving technique…and tasted it. Tasted sweet! Ah ha!!! “It’s oatmeal, it’s oatmeal!” he shouted. More questioning ensued until I sent up a desperate prayer and told them that there would be no TV until the boy who spilled and licked the creamer confessed.

A little later in the day Sweet Boy#2 came to me. With downturned eyes he mumbled that he might have accidentally tipped the bottle of creamer over and maybe then he tried to wipe it up with a papertowel. “We are out of papertowels.” It must have been tp then he mumbled. Probably that is what happened. This seemed quite suspicious to me and so I sent him to the Hunky Hubby. Where our middle boy confessed. He had made up the story about spilling the creamer so that they could watch TV. Aha! Then the culprit must be Sweet Boy#3. I interrogated him again. “It was oatmeal!” He insisted. And then a terrible thought struck me….

“Did you spill oatmeal today?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“Show me where.”
My youngest led me to the table and pointed to the very spot that the alleged crime had occured.
“Then what happened?”
“I wiped it up with a paper towel.”
“We don’t have any papertowels.”
“Ummm, I licked it.”

Mystery solved, apologies given, and “My friend Rabbit” to watch on TV while I fried quessadillas. They didn’t cover this in parenting school, Anne of Green Gables, but not parenting school.