Are Our Little Darlings Really Angels?

Or are they little devils in disguise

My son was a little angel for about 9 months… then he turned into and imp. From there he developed into a fully fledged prankster. But still my angel

I should have known right from the start that this child of mine was going to give me nightmares or place me in embarrassing situations.

The first incident happened when I took him shopping with me. I was walking down the hardware aisle with him securely strapped in the shopping trolley. It was only a narrow aisle and being polite I stepped to the side to let someone pass, it was just long enough for my son to curl his tiny fingers around the handle of a 10 litre can of white gloss paint. Of course he couldn’t lift it; all it needed was the motion of the trolley as I moved on to bring the can of paint crashing to the floor. Of course the lid had to fly off didn’t it. The floor, the stock on the shelves and my jeans were covered in white gloss. The manager was a real nice guy and must have been having a real good day. He was very good about it, took me through to the staffrooms, and tried to clean the majority of the paint from my jeans while other staff cleaned up the mess and also took care of my son.

Another day we were wondering round a store with my son sat in his pram. All went well and I arrived home with no mishaps at all. Smiling I lifted him from his pram… Oh Oh there I found a clock tucked under the covers. It was quite embarrassing taking the clock back and explaining what happened.

By the time he was walking things only got worse and he seemed to choose his moments well.

He was a great one for hiding things; sometimes they were never to be found again, other times he would hide thing in impossible places. He was almost 2 and I was pregnant, at that time we lived in a flat with only one entrance. Unfortunately one night I had developed problems with my pregnancy and the doctor was called out on emergency. He arrived within minutes but it took us another 20 to open the door to him… Why? Because we couldn’t find the door keys. He had pushed them through the vents in the fitted gas fire so that the whole thing had to be dismantled to retrieve them.

His obsession with hiding things increased and he realized he could have more fun with this game.He started off with simple things, like collecting mice, voles and spiders and putting them in my peg bag so that when I was hanging out the washing I would put my hand in the bag with the expectation of pulling out a clothes peg. He would stand and giggle at my jumping three feet in the air on pulling out one of his little creatures.

Have you ever wondered what toasted mouse smells like?

I wasn’t the only one targeted with this game, he would hide spiders inside his uncle’s crash helmet.

By the time he was 7 we were living in Papua New Guinea and he was into investigation and finding out how things worked. We had clocks and radios that no longer worked. LP’s were used as Frisbees. It was about this time that he also experimented with wearing my dresses which had me a little worried, but this phase was short lived.

He used to tease the house boy, small things like unplugging the vacuum cleaning whilst in use. His little mind was forever looking for the next fun thing to do and I had to be ever vigilant.

His curiosity always got the better of him. One day he decided to check a mosquito coil on hearing me enter the lounge he hid it under a chair cushion and it was forgotten about until later when I smelled burning.

‘I can see you’ was a phrase that came to be associated with him throughout the neighbourhood and among our friends after calling this out from our balcony which overlooked a neighbour’s swimming pool. The neighbour bathing nude thought this was hilarious and I was just pleased he hadn’t taken offence.

The schools in Papua New Guinea were usually set on stilts so it was easy for children to crawl underneath. I remember there was one particular teacher, a female with a broad Scottish accent whom the children found difficult to understand. This frustrated her and she would often lose her temper with them. Of course the class od 9 year olds were upset about this and wanted to teach her a lesson, and who better to do it than my son and a couple of his friends. They crawled under the classroom with tools from the woodwork class and drilled a hole right under where the teacher’s chair legs were positioned so that as soon as she sat down the legs would slip through the holes.

The school were used to his pranks, usually harmless. They would tell me what he got up to when we met socially. All of the teachers loved him and his ‘fun spirit’ so mostly all he got was ‘Don’t do it again’ whilst they were holding in their laughter.

At the age of 11 we had to return to England for a year due to a family illness. We lived in a small village for that time. My son suddenly had a growth spurt from being a slender little thing, he grew upwards and outwards and his pranks grew in magnitude and he developed entrepreneurial skills.

I was quite proud of him when he got himself a little job hand delivering advertising leaflets. I wasn’t sure that I should still be proud of him or not when I discovered that he was paying someone else half of his pay to do the job. No need to guess where the money that he earned went… the joke shop right?

Of course at the age of 11 Santa was way out off the planet but his little sister still believed (or hoped) and so that Christmas I did my usual thing and left a cookie and glass of milk for Santa. Popped into my daughter’s bedroom late Christmas Eve and swigged the milk off in one go. Boy did my throat burn. My darling son had replaced most of the milk with Black Label Whisky.

As I said his pranks grew in magnitude and it wasn’t long before he and a friend blew up a greenhouse whilst experimenting with fireworks. It was garden duties for a month for both boys.

The couple over the road had a garden shed which they had set up to take afternoon tea during the summer months, little curtains at the windows. Of course it didn’t take my son long to spot that they had left the key in the door and locked them in there one afternoon.

He also would tie 2 neighbours garden gates together.

Mr Smith (not his real name) who lived in the village was a grumpy old coot; I don’t think he knew how to smile, complained constantly about everything. He drove one of those little 3 wheeler bubble cars which was parked on the street because he had no garage or driveway, just a garden gate. He hated kids, they only had to walk past him and he would be shouting and waving his stick at them. 5 of the boys no doubt led by my son decided to teach him a lesson. They literally lifted his little car over the garden fence and placed it down right in front of his front door.

Shortly before his 16^th birthday I walked into his bedroom to wake him up one morning, turned right around and walked back out again. Every inch of his walls were covered in page 3 pin ups. “Ignore it” a friend said “He is just trying to shock you”. So I said nothing and he said nothing for about a month. But I got tired of all these page 3 girls staring at me every time I went into his room. But I didn’t want a confrontation with him. So finally the tables turned and it was my turn to get my own back for all his pranks. I bought him for his birthday what every 16 year old desired. A Page 3 calendar. He must have liked that present because all of the posters were removed from his bedroom walls by the end of that day. Just once the shoe was on the other foot.

He was a sweet kid and everybody loved him even though he was a prankster. He created much laughter amongst the adults. One of these children with such an angelic smile that nobody could stay mad with him for long.

These are just a few of the pranks he pulled. I would tear my hair out wondering what he would do with his life. But I needn’t have worried. He is now 37 and married with 4 children, a loving but firm father and a respectable member of the New Zealand Police Force.

© Rosemary Sadler Jan 2012

Thank you to the talented mckbirdbks for the illustrations