I have to share something that happened with my son this past weekend, since it so perfectly illustrates the meaning of the title of my blog.

Oliver, who is seven, was mad at me about . . . I don’t remember what, because that’s how bad my memory is, but it doesn’t really matter. So he was mad at me, and his revenge for whatever I had done was to try to trip me. I discovered this because I went to look for my shoes and found them about eighteen inches apart on the floor with one end of a string tied to each shoe and the string stretched as tightly as possible between them.

I chided him about the “trap,” telling him that purposely tripping someone could cause the person to get seriously hurt and have to go to the hospital. “But I knew you would see it!” he countered. Okay, fair enough, I thought. I was pretty sure he hadn’t really wanted me to get hurt; it was just that he didn’t know how else to express his anger. (I’m supposed to be teaching him that part, but, um, I think I need to use some new curriculum.) So I let it drop.

A few minutes later, I looked at the trap again and noticed something I hadn’t before. On the other side it, where I would likely have fallen had his plan worked, were three pillows, laid on the floor carefully, end to end. He wanted to trip me, but he wanted me to have a soft landing, to not be injured. (I don’t know why he didn’t point out the pillows when I scolded him about the trap.) He wanted to hurt me but he didn’t want to hurt me. Isn’t that how we humans are? We engineer falls onto pillows, and we scream in whispers.