My kids love knock-knock jokes, but a few weeks ago, Tad played the biggest knock-knock joke thus far. Here’s how it went:
“Knock, knock” at the front door.
“Who’s there?” I wondered aloud as Bryan went to answer it.
“Tad!?!” he replied as he entered the kitchen with an alarmed look on his face and diaper-clad baby Tad in his arms.
Somehow, Tad had escaped from the house and was found wandering half-naked on the sidewalk outside the front of our home by two strangers (angels?). Tad could have easily stepped into the street and been hit by one of the many speeding cars that zoom along the busy road bordering our house.
Freaked out, I checked every door and tried every lock. The only clue to his means of escape was an interior door from the house to the garage that was slightly ajar, likely from my several trips back and forth to the deep freeze as I prepared dinner. Oddly enough, upon further investigation, I also discovered that the main garage door was wide open. “Yikes!” I thought. I was certain that it had been closed earlier.
As I pressed the button to close the garage door, Tad toddled toward me and excitedly babbled, “Button! Button!” He then squeezed past me, scrambled atop an unsightly mound of shoes just inside the door to the garage, scaled a shoe box that was leaning vertically against the wall, pushed the button, and reopened the garage door.
Mystery solved.
Shoes and box removed.
Mental note made: “Tad cannot be trusted.”
Prayer uttered: “Thank you for keeping my baby safe!”
And that was the end of the joke, or so I presumed, until a letter addressed to me arrived in the mail two days later.
Tearing open the envelope bearing the official seal of the “Texas Department of Child Protective Services,” my clammy hands trembled, my forehead glistening with beads of nervous sweat, and throat instantly filled with a putrid pool of vomit.
“If this is one of Bryan’s jokes, I’ll dismember him!” I seethed.
But then I reconsidered, knowing that a cruel prank would be infinitely better than an official investigation of my (many) parental deficiencies.
Frantically scanning the letter, Relief washed over me as I realized that it was simply an ironically-timed request for a statement of reference on behalf of friends seeking to become foster parents.
Bad joke, Tad. Very bad joke.
