Most of my bright ideas come to me in
the shower. I read something once about how the thousands of drops of
water hitting a person's back is thought to stimulate, well, thought.
Who can say. This bright idea came to me while I couldn't sleep. That
doesn't happen too often – me not being able to sleep. I pondered
over how to convey the concept of what lying does to parents (and
others). And a light bulb went off.
I purchased a container of white
tic tacs (any color would do). I took them home. I debated on whether
I had to do the deed or if I could get by with lying (oh the irony).
I debated on how to commit the grossification. They sat on the
counter for a couple weeks. One Monday evening I decided to go for
it. I donned a glove, removed 1 tic tac, rubbed it on a butt and
carefully replaced it into the plastic container. Immediately
following glove disposal, I placed a piece of duct tape over the
tic tac opening – cause, gross and ewww. I didn't tell Aaron about
my evil plan.
We started Family Home Evening (a
weekly family meeting with a song and focused topic for discussion).
I held up the tic tac container and it this is basically what
followed:
Me: Who would like one of these tic tacs
All Kids: Me! Me!
Me: What if I told you that one of
these was rubbed on a butt? Would you still want one?
Joel solo: yeah!!!
Me: [hands thrown up in frustration]
Well there goes my whole point... Joel, I'm not joking, one of these
got rubbed on a butt. And not the soft part, but the gross inside
part.
Joel: [after a pause] No!!!
Katie: Did you really do that?
Me: Yes, because I knew you guys would
ask. Now, back to the lesson.... There is only ONE butt-rubbed tic tac
in here, the rest of them should be fine.
Katie: Not the ones it touched!
Me. Okay, but I put it back in at the
top, the bottom ones are probably fine. Does anyone want to risk it?
Look how many there are, you are likely to pick a not-gross one.
All: [thought] No.
Me: These tic tacs are like the things
you say. Most of what comes out of your mouth is good and the truth
but every once and a while you say a lie, which is like a butt-rubbed
tic tac. See, the thing is, we don't know which one is the butt-rubbed
tic tac and which isn't. Do you see that? We can't tell. It only takes
ONE lie to ruin a whole lot of what you say. Do you see why trusting
you after a lie is so hard?
Kids: Yeah.
Me: Cause we don't know which is the
butt-rubbed tic tac, or lie, and which isn't.
Aaron and I then helped each child
(even the 2 year old) to summarize the lesson. Aaron was impressed
with the object lesson but upset that I “wasted” a whole
container of tic tacs. I think it was a good investment. We saw the
lightbulbs going off as understanding crossed their faces and hearing
Aurora say “butt-rubbed tic tac” is hilarious!
