Dad Entry #197

It's funny to hear an eight-year-old wax nostalgic. Megan says things like, "When I was little, I liked the monkey bars." I think, when I was little, I went to high school, and then college, and then I settled in Chicago and got married.

Megan can be snippy and snarky, and I don't like it. I don't like soggy toast either. Dealing with soggy toast, however, might be easier. At different times, I have tried sending Megan to her room, lecturing her, screaming at her, or letting things slide (in hopes she'll cheer up). I have employed these methods, as well as variations and combinations thereof, and have achieved positive results exactly never. Is it too ambitious to think win-win here? Megan is only crabby sometimes, and it's very uncommon for Michael, but crabbiness is a nails-on-chalkboard thing for me.

I live on the 4th floor of a condo building. To get there, we typically take stairs, unless overburdened with stuff to carry, in which case - not being Sherpas capable of such things - we cheat with the elevator. Yesterday, Michael and I took the elevator; we had a ton of groceries, his backpack, my work bag, my coffee mug, his lunch bag, and the usual jumble of books, papers, mail, and garbage to lug. Megan took the stairs, despite my hollering at her as I stumbled through the lobby doorway with plastic grocery bag handles cutting into my fingers. Of course, up on the 4th floor, I couldn't find Megan. She wasn't waiting at our locked condo door. She wasn't by the elevator or in the stairwell, either. It's really not a feeling to joke about. I've felt it before, briefly, following unplanned separations in stores, for example, or crowds. It's a doozy, a real humdinger. I frantically enlisted Michael to help. He could plainly see I was freaked. He said, "Dad, when we find her, please don't yell at her." I didn't yell at her. She quickly reappeared and explained she had gone to the 5th floor to peak through a glass-plated roof access door. It won't happen again unless I know, and approve, and probably join her.