Nanci Kuykendall

I was reading this thread and got to the point about
the "consequence" of cleaning up something you break.
I was reminded of the other night here at home. The
three adults in the house had just finished playing a
board game. We were picking up, rising from the table
to get ready for bed. I took a small glass dish on
the table and slid it closer to the edge, thinking I
would pick it up when I got up to take it to the sink.
The table it seems was exceptionally slick however,
maybe because Tom had made bread on it that day, and
the dish instead sailed clean off the table and had a
mini explosion on the floor.

It was somewhat late and we were all pretty tired. I
was staring stupidly at the reamins of the dish for a
few seconds, and then we all just looked at each other
and started laughing. Thomas (9), coming to
investigate the noise, took the kittens out of the
room so they would not cut their feet on glass shards.
Nicole and I moved the chairs and things out of the
way and Tom went to fetch broom and dustpan to sweept
up, all without discussing it or doing more than
laughing and my recieving a bit of gentle ribbing for
launching the dish to it's demise.

Being that we were all tired, my potentially being
able to have a cranky response at that time and having
been a bit stunned by what happened at first, if they
had instead reminded me to clean it up, not moved to
help me and been less congenial overall, I think it
would have been a much bigger deal than it needed to
be and I would have felt overall a lot worse about
something ultimately pretty stupid and minor. I'm
sure glad no one informed me of the consequences of my
actions or directed me to see to it.

Nanci K.