The Noxzema Incident

I know several bloggers with small children.  Mostly I think oh thank GAWD that’s not me.  But if there’s one thing I occasionally envy, it  is their ability to chronicle all the goofy stuff their children do so they don’t forget.  I know my kids have done hundreds of things I don’t remember that were absolutely hilarious at the time.  But there are some incidents that stick out in my mind.

One we just call the Noxzema Incident.  A friend, I’ll call her L, and I were hanging out at her house one day.  Our usual activity was to sit in front of the TV with Thing Two, who was about two years old at the time, while her youngest (4) and my Thing one (6) ran off to play.  As long as we didn’t hear blood-curdling screams, we figured they were okay.  Since we had young children, and she had few stations, we OD’d daily on PBS.  She’s the one who came up with the idea for “Reefer Tree” which made much more sense than the nauseating “Big, Big World”.  Haven’t heard of that show?  Oh oh, LINK DROP!

Anyway, we were, as usual, sitting on the couch amongst piles of laundry (we looked at it sternly every once in a while, but rarely moved it), and Thing Two was on the floor putting marbles in her mouth, when I noticed an unusual smell. (Click to enlarge pictures I actually didn’t steal off Google Images!)

Then we noticed, hey, the kids have been awfully quiet.  This is often a much worse sign than hearing actual screams.  So we got up and walked to the hallway.  The smell grew stronger.  Yup, definitely that delightful chemical smell of Noxzema.  WTF.  We kept walking toward her daughter’s room.  The smell got even stronger.  Then we heard her daughter, E, shout a warning to Thing One.

Uh oh.

We reached the door and opened it.  There, attempting to hide in the toy box, were Thing One and E.  E was in her underwear, covered from head to toe in Noxzema.  There was also Noxzema on the floor, the furniture, and her older sister’s favorite dress.  Only Thing One had no Noxzema on her but only because she didn’t like to get messy at that age (This changed with therapy.  Why did we give her therapy again?)  I guess because of her cleanliness, she thought she could get away with it.

No honor among thieves.

I informed her that she was in just as much trouble as her friend, even if she was only the getaway driver.  It’s not as if she attempted at any point to stop her little buddy.  The only problem was that while we were telling them they were in SUCH TROUBLE we were having to not laugh.  But our voices were wavering “You are in trouble, clean up this mess . . . no really, trouble, so . . . we’ll be back . . . to tell you . . . your punishment.”

Then we went back to the living room and laughed our heads off.