Hello, 911?

Y’ALL.

My sons did not go to sleep until almost 11pm. They were threatened with grounding, dismemberment, typhoons and anything else I could think of not to get me out to bed before 6am today. (Looking back, I think we’ll all see where I went wrong there, but hey… It was the end of a very long day and I was tired, ok?)

Friday is our trash day, so when I woke up to a booming crash at 4:09am, I assumed it was my lunatic neighbor getting his garbage together. Then comes another boom and I realize the sound is coming from inside my home. Clearly we’re being robbed. And clearly it’s being done by the world’s loudest felon. There may not be much to steal, but my babies are in this house. Not on my watch, man. I grab my cell phone to call 911.

I sneak downstairs with a freaking baseball bat, ready to straight-up Donkey Kong Smash the burglar. And then I turn the corner into the kitchen to find Noodle, standing on the dining room table. The kid is repeatedly stabbing a box of Cheez-Its with a butter knife. He’s doing so by jumping into the air and chopping at the box on the downstroke like the guy from Mortal Kombat. Each and every attack sounds like a cannon blast and I’m fairly sure the crackers are pulverized beyond measure.

I am dumbfounded. It takes me a literal minute to even put a sentence together- Noodle is still Krav Maga’ing the Cheez-Its and hasn’t even noticed me. He gets in at least two more leaps before I can speak. All I can manage to splutter is, “What the hell, dude???” And he looks up at me with wide eyes and says, “well, Roo ate the rest of the open box and you said I couldn’t wake you up til the clock says 6-zero-zero. So I’m trying to karate open the new box.” Without a word, I lean over, slide my finger under the box tab on top and Noodle breathes a quiet, “Ooooooooooh….”

We are not raising Rhodes Scholars here, people. Bean remains my sole shining beacon of intelligence. Here’s to hoping that there is a college offering athletic scholarships for fake karate and sheer dumbassery.