Seeing the Light

Ralph was an idiot for a flashlight. He memorized where they were kept, whimpered at the drawer handle until someone opened it and pulled one out. Inevitably, the first one wouldn't work. Nor the second, the third or the fourth. By the time the fifth and sixth were tried, whoever had ventured into that drawer began to suspect within the drawer lay a mystical land of light-less torches. But it's always the tiny ones at the bottom that work. And so Ralph would make a gleeful little sound and wait for circles of light to appear on the wooden floor, arcing around him, over and off at odd angles.

Betty was mystified by this ridiculous display. It's light - you can't catch it, ridiculous boy! He would chase in circles and jump and scamper about, and she would lie on the couch, dozing. Unless these shenanigans occurred upstairs. Scampering about where the people and the dogs sleep at night, particularly when we are getting ready to sleep...well that's just too much.

This night, she had to step in and tell him, very firmly, to knock it the heck off. She got yelled at, of course. But the point was made. Because if the flashlight game got the point that Betty intervened, then it was always ended by the people. So order over the house remained firmly in Betty's control. And reaffirmed just in time, because she was absolutely exhausted from such a tumultuous day.