I suffer from stiffenitis, a condition that causes my external appearance to conflict with my internal reactions. This means that when my overactive sense of humor is triggered by environmental factors, such as Dylan doing something terrible that I shouldn’t laugh at or encourage, I’m forced to curb a smile through straining my facial muscles. Basically it all boils down to being immature and finding Dylan’s bad attitude and incessant sass hilarious. It’s troublesome.
My little big boy likes to provoke reactions for sport. His rebel-rebel bratty ways are both the source of irritation and amusement. Yesterday as I stood at the kitchen sink, loading the dishwasher like a good girl, a car ran into me from behind. I turned around and who was behind the wheel? My proud little devil Dylan. A girls gotta be consistent when correcting behavior so I adopted his school’s term and said, “Dylan, go around.” The omen child stayed smirking, backed up and ran full steam ahead, hitting my legs. In full blown mom-tone I advised again, “Dylan, go around.” His smile grew. Part of me wanted to laugh at his blatant insurgency but instead I faced the sink. Yup, he struck again. Okay, that’s it! He’s getting popped! I turned around and before I could even try to correct his behavior, he crashed into me a fourth time. Then laughed.
Dylan is sadistic and proud. He starts with a sneak attack and ends with an unwavering, “Well whattaya gonna do about it momz?” Somehow he knows I won’t press charges or knock his butt out, and the risk of hard time in his crib (2 whole minutes) is totally worth it.
But..my sense of humor is so twisted and sick that I actually find his repetitive jerk of all jerks attitude to be nothing short of hilarious. It kills me that I cant enjoy our cat and mouse exchanges like I really want to. Apparently a girl’s gotta parent responsibly because what starts with crashing into mom will evolve into crashing into the neighbor's cat if I let him get away with it. “It’s not funny Dylan,” I lie while picking up the car and pushing it away. “Mommy said go around."
And with my full-fledged stiffenitis in effect, I turn back towards the dishes and do my very best not to laugh hysterically at the miniature-button-pushing-brat-year-old.