'What Do You Want Me to Say?'

One Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago, all of us were doing our own little things until Daddy stepped out of his office and noticed a huge crayon scribble on the wall of our master bed room. We then found this kind of scribbles everywhere on the white wall of our house, from upstairs bedrooms to downstairs living room, from the size of a peanut to the size of a poster.

Knowing it was going to be a huge job to clean them off and the wall may never look the same, Daddy and I were both pretty mad even though we knew that person didn’t do it on purpose.  And it was not hard to figure out it was a “he” who did it as Olivia never draws on the wall and some of those “masterpieces” actually had Evan’s squiggle signature on them. However, we decided to give him a chance to admit his own mistake.

We called both Olivia and Evan in front of a scribble and asked them who did it. Olivia immediately said: “Not me.”

I then turned to Evan and asked him: “Evan, did you do this? Tell Mommy yes or no?”

From the straight faces and the tone of our voices, Evan knew this one was serious and he was in big trouble. With a finger on his lips, he raised his head, looked at me and then to his daddy. He had that timid but at the same time perplexed look in his eyes as if he was trying but could not figure out what would happen to him after he answer the question. He then bent down his head but didn't say anything.

“Evan, look at Daddy. Tell me, did you or did you not draw on the walls?” Daddy asked him this time. From long time ago, both the kids know that it is not a good situation to be in when Daddy sounds serious.

Evan once again looked at me and Daddy, and with that timid and dazed look in his eyes, he asked: “What do you want me to say?” 

Feeling the urge to laugh I tried to keep the straight face. The poor little guy! He knew he was going to be punished a big time and he was so afraid of it that he wondered which answer we might like to hear which might cut him some slack.