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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Yesterday The Mercenary was hoping to earn some extra money, so I mentioned that I’d pay fifty cents if he’d clean out the van.  It wasn’t much later that he informed me that the job was complete.  I asked the standard question:  “Will I think it’s clean when I look at it?”

“Oh, yes!” he told me.

I know you know what I’m going to say next.  I opened the van, and sure enough the job was not done to standard.  I pointed out a couple of things that needed his attention, and then told him that he should go over the van with a fine toothed comb.

He was very confused.  I tried explaining that a fine toothed comb has lots of teeth close together, as opposed to a wide toothed comb.

The confused look remained on his face.

For my next attempt, I explained that a fine toothed comb would comb more hairs on his head, and do a more detailed job in combing all his hairs instead of just clumps of hair.

He stood there, brow still furrowed.

Finally, I tried telling him that “When people get lice, the eggs in the hair are really tiny, and you need a special comb with small teeth to get them out.   In order to do the job right, you have to pay close attention to detail.   So just like you’re really careful in cleaning the lice out of the hair, you have to be really careful to go over all the spots in the van when you’re cleaning.”

The brow softened a little.  Then he asked me, “Okay but why do I need to use a comb?”

Earnest Parenting: helping keep the humor in family life.

Image courtesy of pm107uk via Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.