Playing with Fire

They go through a WEEK of fire safety at school. They hear about it on the children's TV shows they watch. We've TALKED about it. And yet, Libby, freshly 10 years old, decided to play with matches this weekend.

I had been working out at my in-laws's farm. I had my tools on their wooden front porch. I had taken matches and lighter fluid out to an area of the yard where I was burning a pile of old wood. When I was done, I set the matches and lighter fluid on the porch with my tools. My kids are between the ages of 6 and 11, and I THOUGHT all had enough common sense to not play with matches.

But I continued my yard work, and a little later in the day went up on the porch to pick up a tool, and I notice two burned matches on the WOODEN porch steps. Sigh. The two little girls are probably not coordinated enough to strike a match. None of the grown ups around would strike one on a WOODEN porch in the middle of a heat wave in JULY in OKLAHOMA. So that left two suspects.

I sat them both down and neither one of them new anything about the matches. My children think I have magical powers. I tell them that I KNOW one of them did it and even more precisely that they played with TWO matches. Libby finally said that she did it, but Frank did it too. Then Carlie chimes in "No, he didn't. I was there and saw you do it, and Frank didn't do any."

So Carlie and Frank got a swat for not telling on her. And Libby got several swats....for playing with matches...for lying to get Frank in trouble. Bob asked her later why she lied and said Frank did it too. She replied "Because I wanted us to be even. If I got in trouble I wanted him to get in trouble too."

When I asked WHY she had played with the matches, she said that Madi had gotten the box of matches wet with the water hose. So Libby was checking to see if the matches still worked. Gee, she'd HATE for me to have a box of matches that didn't work.

She also got Memaw riled up, because while they were spending the night in the camper, she put a towel over her bend legs and baby doll between them and proceeded to "Give Birth" with much grunting and groaning.

So I am telling this to one of my co-workers today. And he proceeds to tell me about his 12 year old daughter who has 400 friends on her facebook account, and has apparently given out her name and phone number to strangers on the internet. Because someone left a message on their phone at midnight asking for sexual favors.

I thought about it a moment, and then decided that maybe playing with matches wasn't so bad after all!!!