George as Jean Valjean

It has been a long ol' time since I watched/sang/read Les Miserables. I was mildly obsessed with it in high school (weren't you?). All the same, Jean Valjean and Bishop Myriel's silverware are the first things that pop into my head with this George Moment. Here's the story...

Dishes. {insert sound of repressed frustration}. We don't have a dish-washing machine. But we do have children...lots of them. Children to whom we are attempting to teach responsibility and work ethic and cooperation. Gabriella has been on dishes for quite a while now, and it was my intent to just leave her there until she demonstrated a little self-mastery. I'll spare you all the motherly admonitions and parental whining, but the end of the saga is that I am now on dishes, and Gabba has been relegated to maintaining the dining room and all its tables.

So, I was doing the dishes. And since I do dishes every day (see, Gabba, that's how you stay on top of things, by doing them every day), I have a fairly accurate idea of how my household inventory stands. On the day in question, I took the extra precaution of gathering up all the dishes from around the house, so as to avoid the got-the-dishes-done-but-not-really-look-what-I-found-under-my-bed-Mom syndrome. So, when I drained the sink and wiped down the counters, I was confident that I had washed everything. It was as I was putting away the silverware and the utensils that I noticed it: the table knives...there weren't any. Not in the drawer, not in the clean dishes. How could that be? I had rounded up every dish in sight. Where do 12 table knives just up and disappear to? I mentioned it to Mark that night as we were going to bed. We both agreed that the culprit was most likely George (who is always guilty until proven innocent), and I mused that all our knives might possible reside in various heater vents around the house by now.

That next evening, I was on the computer when George wandered by. He stopped, opened the little door on the storage cupboard built into the computer desk, and reached in to grab the entire stack of table knives he had stashed in there. I laughed when I saw his choice of cache locations (table knives can be construed as office supplies, right?), and called to Mark that I knew where all the knives had gone. He came in time to see George lifting his utensil booty out and closing the cupboard. Mark admonished our toddler, and told him to put the knives back where they belong. "Kay," said George. Here is George, putting the knives back in the silverware drawer.

He put them all back without complaint or fanfare (except a couple of camera flashes). He took his time and did it very neatly, one knife at a time.

Why did George run off with all the knives and stash them in the first place? Was he actually listening during all those Preparedness family home evening lessons? Who knows. But the Mystery of the Disappearing Knives was solved. Nancy Drew would be so proud of me.

All done, Daddy. (Good job, George.)

It is noteworthy that I did NOT play my roll as Bishop Myriel very well: I did not hand my two-year-old any candlesticks. They're brass, you see, and he has been known to use them as mallets. You know, with "mallets and forethought." So, no...no candlesticks for this little Jean Valjean.