Beezus on blenders

[kinglearisstupid]

Beezus's dad is very bad at sharing his toys.

"If you were in my class, Ms. Carol would put you in a corner," she tells him when he takes his golf sticks away from her. She didn't even break anything this time.

"You have your toys, and I have mine," Daddy tells her before he nudges her out of his study.

"I let you play with my toys all the time," Beezus counters.

"Yes, you do," Daddy agrees as they walk back into the TV room, "but there's often an element of coercion involved, if we're being honest here."

"I let you win Ninja Monster Iron Chef last time when I was the judge."

"Hey, now, I won fair and square."

"Your competition was a stuffed penguin," Mom points out from where she is watching her favorite show. It is full of funny looking people in funny looking clothes with funny looking hair talking in a funny accent. There is no singing or dancing or hoarding or snakes or people being eliminated. Downtown Abbey is the boringest TV in the world.

"I thought your Frankenstein burgers were a little overdone," Beezus says to her dad, who crosses his arms and huffs like she's hurt his feelings. She feels a little bad about that, so at bath time she lets him have the octopus that squirts water while she gets the stupid duck that does nothing but float.

*

The kitchen is also full of toys that belong to Beezus's father. These ones he lets her play with, sometimes, when he's around to supervise. He has all sorts of machines with lots of different buttons, and each of them make a different noise when you press on them. You might press on a button and get a whirly noise. You might press on another button and get a gargly noise. The important thing to remember is to keep the lids on these toys. Last time she forgot --- she didn't do it on purpose, she just forgot because she was so excited --- and it turned into what Beezus's dad calls the Chocolate Milkshake Volcano Incident.

"Let's not have a repeat of that," Daddy said when they were done cleaning the ceiling. Daddy did most of the doing. Beezus mostly watched and told him which spots he had missed.

"Okay," Beezus said, because it was what her dad wanted to hear, but when she grows up she is going to do that again. She is going to have her own kitchen with her own toys and she will have a Chocolate Milkshake Volcano in her kitchen all the time. It is the coolest thing in the world.

Beezus's dad still lets her help him in the kitchen, but now he keeps an eye on her at all times.

"You can't do that," Beezus tells him.

"Oh yes I can," says Daddy. "I'm not going to close my eyes for even a second. I'll be watching you, kiddo."

"No, you can't. You have to blink," Beezus says. "So you have to close your eyes. And if you don't blink, your eyes will get tired and stuff will go inside of them and you'll go blind. Then you won't be able to see where you're going, so you might walk into a big, giant oven or you won't be able see a tiger coming towards you and then you'll die."

Daddy looks at her the way he does sometimes, like he's Horton and she's the elephant-bird that came out of the egg. "You've really thought this through, haven't you?"

"Yep," Beezus tells him. "But don't worry. I won't let you die. I will trick the tiger into walking into the big oven and then I will roast him, even though I'm not supposed to because tigers are endangered."

"Always knew I could count on you," her dad says, closing the lid tight, and lets her press the button.