Respect the Pouch?

“Dad, does anything really happen if you don’t respect the pouch?”

That was the question at 7AM this morning. I don’t answer such earth-shatteringly important question directly. I always try to make them work for it:

“I don’t know, guess you’ll just have to try it. Do we have any ‘pouches’?”

In fact, we did. And she went and grabbed one to have with her breakfast. She then started getting all scientific:

“Mom, I’m going to do an experiment to see if anything happens if you don’t respect the pouch.” I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to work up the nerve to do it or what. Either way, she seemed genuinely intrigued by this little endeavor she had set herself on.

Unfortunately, she didn’t finish the drink before it was time to go to school, so her experiment had to wait. But she remembered when she got home from school (I, for my part, had forgotten) and finished the drink with her lunch. Then she announced “OK, I’m going outside to do my experiment. Do you guys want to watch me?”

We walked over to the door, but made sure it was closed. Hey- you never know. She puffed up the bag and then set it down on the deck. Then, she gave it a good look and finally picked her foot up and stomped down on the pouch…

Then she just stood there for a moment, looked left, looked right, shrugged and then came in the house to announce the results. “Nothing happens if you don’t respect the pouch.”

One mystery solved.