To Catch a Thief

I woke up this morning to a ransacked apartment and immediately shouted for Angie.

'Holy shit! We've been robbed!'

I raced down the hall to check on the boys and was relieved to find them innocently snoring away in bed. I thought about calling the cops, but decided to first launch a preliminary investigation of my own. Papa style.

The first clue my trained eye picked up on was my cell phone, which I had asked Angie to put on the charger the night before.


My keen sense of sleuthery immediately made another rather disturbing discovery. I don't claim to understand the inner workings of Angie's mind, let alone a criminal's, but this was just too far beyond what my gray matter could comprehend. The cold-hearted criminals must have unplugged the charger in a mocking attempt to ensure that my phone was completely dead at exactly the moment when I wanted to call the SWAT team in. Bastards!

I explained my deductions to Angie, who turned red in the face and left the room, a clear indication that I was on the right track. I continued on with my investigation and soon after found the next clue, which provided deep insight into the minds of the culprits.


I paused for a second to analyze this latest revelation. The well thought-out finger-graffiti on the base of our TV stand indicated that the perpetrator either has Angie under surveillance or has a sense of humor, possibly both. It's also quite clear that the culprit has an abdomen that you can wash clothes on and a hairful of chest. Just the facts, ma'am.

As I continued my search, I came across a witness cowering in the corner.

At first glance, the potential informant seemed slightly less than traumatized. After a few probing questions, though, it became quite clear that the pint-sized 'victim' had more culpability than he was willing to admit. I then asked him to come down to the kitchen for a few questions and it became clear that the boy had issues.


After stripping down naked and beating on a trashcan for reasons that can only be explained by genetics and the boy's mother, the accused broke down and admitted to trashing the living room.

Released on bail, the juvenile delinquent was closely monitored as he warmed up with Peter for his Saturday morning sports.


Notice that Tom has his jacket on. Since I still had my detective hat on, I gathered that Peter's squat partner assumed he was also attending the 'big boy fun play' that Tommy only understands on a primitive level. One primal scream later, Tommy also understood that he had put his coat on for no apparent reason other than to amuse his sadistic Papa.

After explaining the facts of life to Tom, I took Peter to sports. After sports, we went to the playground, where Peter growled to me that he was a crouching tiger-bird. Ummm...okay.


I left Bruce Lee's crazy nephew and went to check on my other mentally challenged offspring.


Tommy was totally fixated on his Bobby Car. From experience, I knew that he would ride around for hours and hours; it was a state of mind that I like to call 'leave the boy alone'. Following my clever advice, I left Big Wheel Kid to find out what David was destroying.

I found David perched, poised, and more than willing to completely annihilate a mud puddle until a certain sexy stranger grabbed his ear and explained yet again the concepts of pain and suffering that could or could not result from not listening to one's elders when it came to jumping on watery clusters of dirt.

Confident that I had sufficiently instilled fear and compliance in David, I moved on to Angie, who was grading papers in a fashion that rivaled the Ford assembly lines from the early 1900's.


Angie is a creature of habit and, being German, she habitually resists change. By 'resist', I of course mean that she flat-out refuses to entertain the possibility of changing anything that her brain has deemed orderly. It shouldn't have been so surprising to discover that David has inherited Angie's innate ability to resist authority, yet I was still shocked and awed.

'What?'

This was the question that David posed to me as he was trying to sneak back into the apartment. Instead of a self-induced aneurysm, I chose to ignore the fact that filthy-swine Davey had yet again neglected to head my advice. Instead, I hosed little piggy down, slapped on some pajamas and got my poker on.


Shortly into the first round, I expected one of three loud animals to start barking. As Lady Luck would have it, the animals did not wake up, even when Simone and Flo stopped by for the monthly poker lesson.

In poker, it's always the subtle tell-tale signs that give away the loser. Flo, for example, hides his mouth with his cards and stares at them when he has a good hand. Angie, on the other hand, squints and sticks her tongue out when she is trying to bluff.

I found Angie's technique to be a bit strange, but I'm used to odd people. Sometimes I even marry them, despite their obvious deficiencies in poker. At one point, I looked over and took notice of Angie's pile.

'Holy shit! We've been robbed!'

At least this time, the culprits were sitting across the table from me. As per usual, I had a big fat fatty pile, so from a family perspective, we were breaking even. When Angie tried to buy more chips for the third time, though, I had to intervene. Papa style.

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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I played with Paul and Sebastian.
David: That I can play with Tom.
Tom: I like the pirate thing.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: I didn't have one.
David: Play not with Tom.
Tom: I play not mit David and Peter and Paul.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go to Grams and Opa's.
David: Play with Tom.
Tom: Play memory.