I am in the kitchen standing at the sink, washing the dinner dishes. I yell down to the family room, "Little Billy - it's time to go take a shower."
He answers back, "Okay Mom."
About 15 minutes goes by and I finish my chores in the kitchen, go down to the laundry room to put in a load of laundry and I see my son, sitting in front of the TV, playing the XBox and I say, "Little Billy - I said ... it's time to go get in the shower."
He answers back, "Oh, I forgot," and he drops his XBox controller and races out of the family room to go upstairs.
After about 10 minutes in the laundry room, I finish up and head upstairs to run Alexis a bath. I pass by my son's bedroom, where there I see that he is sitting in the middle of the floor - playing with the Legos he hadn't cleaned up from earlier in the day. I say, "Son - weren't you supposed to go take a shower?"
And he jumps up, says, "Yep, I'm goin'," and heads off towards the bathroom and closes the door.
I run Alexis a bath in the tub in my bathroom, come out of the bathroom and sit on my bed. I am there for only a few seconds - typing something on my laptop - when - out of the corner of my eye - I see in the hallway, just beyond my bedroom door - my son - my darling son - sneaking ... ever so quietly ... out of the bathroom. He leaps across the hallway into the doorway of my daughters' bedroom. Then I watch - slyly - (as he does not know I can see him) - as he stretches one leg around the door frame into the hallway, followed by his whole body that he SUCKS quickly up to the wall (like he's James Bond or something) with his whole body flattened as flat as it will go - head turned sideways, hands flattened out, standing on his tippy-toes (so he will be INVISIBLE, you see). He does all this, I guess, imagining that he is a NINJA and therefore ... I will not see him.
But ... of course, I do.
And so ... although I want to laugh hysterically at his sneaking and these cleverly executed spy techniques - I SCREAM, "BILL ANTHONY," and his flattened figure ceases all movement - becomes like a flattened little stone Ninja-boy, glued against the wall in my hallway - "If you don't get your butt in that shower right this very minute ..." and I see all the muscles in his body relax and he folds away from the wall, a big ol' ridiculous James Bond grin on his face and he laughs.
He leaps back across the hallway, like a little jack-rabbit, into the bathroom once again and closes the door.
On the upside ... Just about the time I want to wring that boy's neck - I want to get up and go grab that kid and put him right in that shower myself ... he sneaks out into the hallway and cleverly and silently flattens his ten-year-old-self smack against the wall and stands very still like a very flat little stone James Bond/Ninja boy ... and all I can do is laugh!