Learnin'

Tonight I was doing some work on the computer, which is upstairs, while Ryleigh was watching cartoons, downstairs. Suddenly, I heard a loud pop, followed by a slight crash. I ran over to the railing to see what happened. Ryleigh assured me that she was fine. She went on to demonstrate exactly what had caused all the noise. Apparently, for some reason, she hooked the end of her newly acquired jump robe around the knobs of our armoire in the living room. I can only figure that she then, for some reasone, leaned upon the jump rope until the rope broke away from then handle, thus saving my armoire knob from an untimely demise.

This incident took me back to a moment in time when I thought it was a great idea to tie a rope to the handle on the cover of the fish aquarium. The other end was tied to something else and a quilt was thrown over the newly stretched rope, creating a wall for my fort in the living room. This was brilliant and worked great, until the weight of the quilt, or someone pulling on it, I really can't remember, caused the cover to be tugged off the aquarium. The cover was made of glass and crashed into the fireplace, breaking in half. I don't remember my parents screaming and yelling at me, but I do remember wondering why I just couldn't see that one coming. It was a real growing experience.

Once this story flashed through my extremely tired brain, I just couldn't get too angry with Ryleigh. I explained to her that was not a great idea and when she asked why I told her that she could break mommy's armoire. To that she replied, and the jump rope? My immediate though was to tell her that the armoire cost much, much more than the jump rope. Infinitely more, in fact, because the jump rope was free and free times infinity still does not equal what took me a year to pay for the armoire. As these words began to roll out of my mouth, I stopped myself before the word cost. I was struck by the fact that her idea of value on these two items had nothing to do with money, but with a simple affection for a toy that was given to her at the children's museum last weekend. I just smiled, knodded and agreed with her. Yes, and the jump rope, let's get that fixed so that you can keep playing with it.