Lesson Learned

Lesson Learned

“This is too easy.”

“This is not easy,” Frank said, looking at the table.

“Not this,” Ted gestured to the puzzle “what she thinks she’s getting out of this.”

"Help me!”

“Don’t you get it? She said as soon as we make the puzzle we get ice cream. What kind of a babysitter does that?”

“I don’t know, a nice one?”

“No... one who likes to keep kids busy with something impossible so she doesn’t have to watch them. I bet we don’t even have ice cream. I’ll go check... Shhh!” off he snuck.

Minutes later, “There is ice cream! But Mrs. Wilson is sitting in Dad’s chair watching TV and eating cookies!”

“What? We had cookies?”

“Focus! She said we could have ice cream when we finished the puzzle. She probably knows we can’t finish the puzzle. She’s going to watch TV, then send us to bed without ice cream because we didn’t finish the puzzle, and she’s going to eat it!”

“That creep! What should we do?”

“Let’s go get the ice cream, hide up in our room and eat it all!”

“Yeah!!”

Later: “And you believed Ted when he told you Mrs. Wilson was eating cookies and watching TV?”

“Yes...”

“And you didn’t hear her pounding on the closet door trying to get you to let her out?”

“I thought that was the TV...”

“I don’t know who I’m most angry at, Ted for the scam, or you for being so gullible again!!!” Mom said.

“Am I in trouble? What does gullible mean?”

“Right now it means you need to stop and think before you go along with Ted’s ideas.”

Frank grew up very conscious of not letting other people rope him into their plans.
Ted, on the other hand, was a millionaire before he was thirty.