It’s a set-up, I tell you

“I am going to pound Kieran when he gets home,” he thundered.  “I found this (and he thrust the sheet of paper at me) on my computer.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Read it,” he said tersely.

Here’s what it said:  “I have hidden yor i-pod until you promise to stop beating me up.  HA HA.  Kieran.”  This, in what appeared to be a fifth grader’s handwriting.

I couldn’t help it.  I did something completely out of character for me (uh-huh) and cracked up.

Kieran is our 11-year-old, the good-natured kid who takes the brunt of the (nearly always) good-natured pounding around here.  Don’t ask me why they show affection that way; they just do.

And in light of the fact that the Just-Now-On-Vacation college sibling has to have his earbuds surgically removed, it was, I thought, a particularly effective way for his little brother to get back at him.

As luck would have it, The Indignant One was out running in preparation for this weekend’s Mini-Marathon in Indy when the supposed perpetrator meandered in from the bus.  “What in the world…?” I said, handing him the paper.

He read it, alarm spreading over his features.  “That wasn’t me!  It was Jamison.”

And then it all clicked.  Yes.  It wouldbe Jamison, the one who froze vinegar into ice cubes and dropped them in my Diet Coke.  It would be Jamison, the one who throws firecrackers out the window to get your attention.  It wouldbe Jamison, the one who inherited Grandpa’s gene for practical jokes and shenanigans.  Itwould be Jamison, the kid whose dream is to be a Disney Imagineer when he grows up.  It all made sense.

Thus, when the real perpetrator got off the bus, a very sweaty, drippy, and much bigger sibling was waiting to give him a bear hug.  There was some shouting and a mini tussle on the lawn, followed by a couple of circles around the car and then a dash into the house by The Indignant One who slammed the door and locked it just in time.  There were frequent, vociferous denials of any wrongdoing by the prankster as he knocked and called at the back door, wanting to get in.  There was some hollering through the window punctuated with giggling by – well, me.

Incidentally, the iPod was later discovered in the innocent person’s drawer, exactly where it had been planted the night before by the real thief under the pretext of looking for something else.

Seriously.  I think this kid has a bright future as an Imagineer if the tricks he thinks up are any sign at all.  Now, if I could just get him to apply all that brilliant ‘imagineering’ and motivation to today’s homework…