“What would you like for breakfast this morning Jet?”
“Fruit Loops! Toast! Orange! Milk! Yogurt!”
After awhile, Jet said, “I need more milk, Grandma!” As I looked at her bowl, which was indeed devoid of milk, she added, “The cereal doesn’t wiggle around anymore so I need more milk!”
In my effort to forestall her frequent requests to add unneeded milk to her cereal bowl, I had made a pronouncement: milk could be added ONLY when the cereal could not wiggle freely in the bowl. I said this once, more than a week ago, but Jet remembers everything — except to add the word “please.”
So I waited and tried to ignore her chant of “more milk, more milk, more milk,” until her Papa said, “Is that how you ask?”
“More milk please Grandma!”
“Okay. Thank you for asking nicely! How is it, Jet, that you can remember what I said about when to get more milk, but you can’t remember to say please?” I didn’t expect an answer, but my words sounded very familiar in my ears. I turned to my husband. “I can almost hear my mother saying, ‘how many times do I have to tell you?’”
I wasn’t expecting an answer to that question either, but a small voice from the kitchen table provided one anyway, “How many fingers do you have Grandma?”