Lying and Cheating

Not sure exactly who turned him on to it, but Michael found the game “Hungry Hungry Hippos” somewhere in our house, and latched onto it as his evening diversion of choice.

After he’s finished his dinner (Juice, chocolate milk, strawberry milk, water, a jar of Gerber Chicken Sticks, a few grapes and as much rice as he can apply to himself and the kitchen table) and while the rest of us are still eating, he makes the plea: “Wanna play Hungry Hungry Hippos with me?”

Usually it’s his mom who caves, despite our unanimous arguments against abandoning our meal.

Playing this game, for Michael, is complicated. The first round of play is similar to that which would be expected by those experienced with the game: the little white wooden marbles are placed in the center of the game board, and players then activate their hippos to make them eat the marbles. There may or may not be another set of this round. The next style deviates quite a bit from the norm. In this round, Michael places all the marbles on the re-entry launchers, and smacks the button as hard as he can, launching the balls into the air and across the room.

“Michael, don’t do that,” We’ll tell him.

This is when we move onto the third round, in which Michael slowly makes his way around the room to pick up the marbles from wherever they are, then starts distributing them to other parts of the room, usually in places where we normally wouldn’t want little white wooden marbles: in the couch cushions (a perennial favorite), in the fireplace, behind the TV, under the cat, etc.

“Michael, pick those marbles up! They belong with the game! If I find any marbles missing from this game, I will throw it away!” Comes the very loud edict from the parent currently sentenced to play the game.

So Michael obligingly, albeit very slowly, rounds the marbles up.

We now enter round 4: Place the marbles on the game board again, but find a way to insert some deviation into the game by hording the marbles as much as possible.

Michael usually plays two hippos to make this happen.

Since he can’t work the thing as quickly or as efficiently as the rest of us, he has to resort to his favorite trick: Forcing open the hippo’s mouth and cramming a marble inside.

I caught him on this last week:

“Michael, you can’t do that! That’s cheating!”

He stopped and looked at me, eyes wide.

“What cheating?”

“This!” And I demonstrated. I opened the hippo’s mouth, and put a marble in. “See? Cheating! You can’t cheat, Michael.”

He pointed to the hippo’s mouth.

“That’s cheating?”

“No, putting a marble in there is cheating.”

“Oh! This is cheating!” He said, holding up a marble.

“No, that’s a marble. Cheating is an action, not a thing.”

This was lost on him, though. Once he had the definition down for what cheating was, he was good with it.

White Marbles = Cheating. Got it.

We move on now, to Saturday morning, in which Michael was hippity-hopping through our bedroom while his mom was getting ready for the day. I came upstairs just in time to see Michael come running out and ask:

“Daddy? Can I have the ball?”

Not knowing what we were talking about, I asked “What ball? Where’s the ball?”

He scurried away.

Curious, I followed him into our bedroom and saw him holding a little silver ball. It was part of a closet extension I’d taken apart to use for hanging a plant in the bathroom, and I put the ball in a drawer in the bathroom, not having a good place to keep it.

“How’d he get that?” I asked.

“From your bathroom drawer,” my wife said. “He told me you said he could have it.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Michael! You told me a lie!”

“Give me the ball, Michael. I didn’t say you could have it.”

“Michael, you told me Daddy said yes. That’s a lie!”

“Yes, Michael. That’s a lie.”

I put the ball back in the drawer, and went to put a load of laundry away. When I returned to the bathroom, Michael was once again chattering away at my wife.

“Can I see the lie?” he kept asking.

“What is he talking about?” we wondered. Then he pulled the bathroom drawer open and peered inside at the little silver ball.

“Michael, that’s a silver ball. The lie is what you said, not the ball!”

Too late. He’d already gotten it straight in his head.

Fast forward to the next afternoon, when in his explores Michael came across yet another little silver ball in the living room (this one, I have no idea what it is or where it came from. It’s scary to think…”

He came running to me with it, holding it out.

“Daddy, this a lie?”

I just wonder what he’s going to decide “Stealing” is.