Buzzed!

Unfortunately, I had to be stuck babysitting when Brother2 decided to get buzzed for the first time. I heard a strange "ffzzzzztttttt" sound and suddenly a smoky, hair-raising, ozone smell filled the air. Running into the dining room, I discovered Brother2 frozen in place in the middle of a slowly dying ring of fire still clutching the now deformed butter knife with which he'd decided to play electrician. Fire was also sputtering along the length of the clock plugged into the wall outlet. I frantically snatched him up, stomped out the remaining cinders in the carpet and ran for the phone.

I called the pediatrician's office and stammered, hysterically to the nurse. Almost immediately the doctor was on the line. He calmly asked me, "Is he breathing?" As soon as I said "yes", he chuckled "Well, he'll never try that stunt again!" Was he ever wrong! Brother2 blew out the fuses on our house three more times over the course of the next year before we finally found an outlet cover that he couldn't jimmy open.

Brother2 also had a major fascination with how things worked. It never ceased to amaze me what he could take apart with just a butter knife as a tool. Door knobs, phones, vacuum cleaners, alarm clocks… Anything was fair game. G-Ma took to buying old phones at garage sales for him so that ours wouldn’t fall apart when needed. Try to open a door in our house and the knob might just come off in your hand.

Makes you wonder what he would’ve done if we hadn’t padlocked all the tools.  Lucky for us, a butter knife makes a darn good substitute for a screwdriver, but not a very good lock pick! 





Next Post: