About a year and a half ago, my five-year-old niece was bouncing her entire body off a Fitness Ball in my living room, flopping herself onto the floor and then making sudden, armless leaps back over it like a suicidal dolphin.
“Could you help me keep my daughter from killing herself?” my sister-in-law implored.
My husband sprung into action.
“Uh-oh. It’s six o’clock,” he said. “The purple ball has to be put away at six o’clock.”
The rest of us nodded solemnly.
My mother watched the episode and uttered, “wow, parents are devious.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2007.