Put a smiley face on it
Don’t miss Adam Green and Megan Banks on The Hits Hawke’s Bay from 6am to 9am, Monday to Friday
If you looked backuponmy google search history, it would be an eclectic, erratic, haphazard collection of questions from the regular to the bizarre. “HowmuchdidNASAspend in 1982”?
“What meals can bemadefrom celery, hummus, a chicken foot and marmite”?“Howto quickly clean a redwine spill before anyone notices” and so on.
Lately, thoughmyfingers have taken to tapping out the big questions every father of an 8-year-old must face, like “Howon earth do I getmy child to operate a littlemorequickly”?
Forsomeone whose regular pace of speaking is roadrunner, the pace of doing anything that is actually required to leave the house, is sloth.
At least half anhour’s worth of planning and 17 repetitions of the samequestion are needed for something as simple as “Put your shoes on please”.
Despite the fact the words “I’m hungry” spewforth like a broken record hour uponhour, a plate of food can be a truly testing journey in the patience of a humanbeing. I swear even the Dali Llama would endup yelling “PLEASE, FORALLOFOUR SAKE, FINISHTHEPLATEBEFORE I’M REINCARNATED”.
Onepiece of potato is followed by a journey to thebedroom to check on a long forgotten snail plus a quick bathroom break on thewayback for a sliver of chicken. Andso with this in mind, we’ve started a smile chart. Those familiarwith the tick chart method will understand this easily. A bit of paper, drawnupinto boxes for the days of the week. If things can be done in even a somewhattimely mannerwith less than three asks per task, we get a smiley face!
If it’s a littlemoredifficult but still done, neutral face. Andshould the day go terribly, a frowny face is placed at day’s end.
In 15 days’ time, wehave a count up, and 10 ormoresmileys is $5 for the $2 shop to grab whatwill probably besome moreslime tomashintomy carpets and gaps between the woodenfloorboards. Morethan four sad faces? It’s a sad day as the $5 makes itswayright back into Dad’s wallet. Which coincidentally would beasmiley face on the Dadchart. MaybeI need to start that, 10smileys equals 50bucks and off to the pub. Nowthat’s a smiley face day for sure!