My children have all inherited both their father’s tender conscience and my transparency. Not sure if that’s fortunate or unfortunate for them. And so none of them can get away with much at all. Poor things. I’m noticing lately that each of them has their very own red herring that gives them away when they’ve done something wrong:

For Claire, she gets this very specific whiny tone. When she employs that tone, I can be 99% sure she done it.

For Adam, it’s teary puppy dog eyes if he knows he’s in the wrong. But actually he usually confesses before it even comes to that. He’s a tender little shoot.

And then there’s Ben, the inspiration for this particular topic. Benjamin has  historically been the trickiest one to indict. But lately, he has been doing something quite humorous to incriminate himself. When he’s the guilty party, he will cover his butt. Literally. He’ll walk in the room with his hands on his butt, and I ask him, “Ben, what did you do?” Poor little Pavlovian thing.