Theater of the Soul

Now that summer vacation is here, the boys needed to accompany me to the Sheriff’s department to file some papers on Friday. I’m never concerned about taking my kids anywhere because they are typically well behaved and respectful. But the offices are located in the courthouse…an environment they’ve never been in before, so I was a bit nervous about Monkeyboy. He’s a very exuberant 9 year old and curious about EVERYTHING. I had visions of him going through the metal detector, setting it off and then running back and forth through it to make it beep over and over again. Or climbing through the Xray machine on the conveyer belt.

We got through the metal detector without incident and went downstairs to the Sheriff’s department. I pointed to a bench in the corner and both boys sat down. The receptionist was busy helping a lawyer with some paperwork, so we waited a few minutes. The Sheriff that usually comes to evict tenants in the building came through and we gabbed for a few minutes. Finally, the receptionist came over and we took care of the paperwork that I was filing. After we were done, she looked over at the boys and commented on how quiet and well behaved they were. I thanked her and we were off.

Ever since they were little kids, I always lay down my expectations for behavior before we enter any eating, shopping or movie establishment. They’ve learned through the years that if they act up, their asses are MINE once we get home. Now that they’re older, the warnings are usually just a simple “Behave OR ELSE”.

On Friday the conversation went a little something like this:

Monkeyboy: “What’s this place?”
Me: “These are the county offices and courthouse. That means this is a place of business and I expect you to be on your BEST behavior here. You also need to remove everything from your pockets because you need to walk through a machine that looks for dangerous stuff and the machine will make a lot of noise if you have so much as a penny in your pockets.”
BooBoo: “What are we going to do here?”
Me: “I need to file some paperwork with the Sheriff’s department…which reminds me. This place has lots of BIG men with BIG guns. Do NOT give them a reason to shoot your ass.”
Kids: ~Wide-eyed Silence~

I am SO not above using fear tactics to get the behavior I want out of kids.