Taunt & Tease

"Honey, your son hates it when I taunt him about crying," I told Mae last Friday as we stood in the lift on the way up to our apartment. Jesse had been crying in the car all the way home.

"No way," Mae didn't believe me. "He's too young to understand you." Jesse, meanwhile, was looking all forlorn and melancholic in his mother's arms. He was in the perfect frame-of-mind for a demonstration. And so I looked into the little boys eyes. Then I pulled my face into a frown in an exaggerated impersonation of his earlier tirade. "Waaauughhh..." I cried mockingly at him.

Then he burst into tears and buried his sad little face in his mother's neck.

"Oh my goodness," Mae was surprised at her little boy's grasps of things. She proceeded to calm him down. "Do it again, do it again," the evil mother urged her husband. And so I proceeded to demonstrate my theory once again.

Again Jesse bawled his eyes out. I had hurt his feelings. And then suddenly, I felt bad. The poor kid was like my plaything. My science experiment. "Aaallright boy, Daddy was only joking," I stroked his little head, "Don't be upset okay, Daddy's sorry."

And then the most amazing thing happened. He turned away from me. I was flabbergasted! I went to Mae's other side and tried to comfort him once again. And again he turned his head away. After 3 or 4 tries, he buried his face in Mae chest. Mae and I were dumbfounded. The boy was boycotting me!!!

I had hurt his feelings and now he was hurting me back. And it took me quite awhile to coax him out of it. Heh! Thankfully, he's okay now. We're friends again. :) That is, until the next time I decide to behave like an ass.