Is Naughtiness Hereditary?

When I was a little girl, just after may parents moved my family into their dream house they had just built, we had a family Thanksgiving with all my aunts, uncles and cousins. One of my cousins that was much older than me had a little girl named Talia. I thought that since we were closest in age, Talia and I should be great friends. Turns out...not so much. She liked my older sisters much better. I was devastated. She didn't want anything to do with me so I went and hid in the formal living room behind some of the furniture. While hiding away I had a brilliant idea. I went to my mother's sewing room and got a pin. I took it back to my hiding place and pulled the lace curtains away from the brand new oak floor boards and proceeded to scratch, "Talia hats me" into the wood. I felt much better after that and went back to my day with the family.

A little while later, probably while I was at school, my mom was vacuuming the floor boards in the formal living room. She pulled back her lace curtains and found my message. I can't imagine how she felt. Her new house had been defiled. She did some investigating. Knowing my brothers were too young to write out a sentence she went to my sisters first and asked them the spell "hate". Of course they got it right. Then she asked me. She found her culprit. I was in so much trouble. She sent me to my room for what felt like forever. To be honest I think she was still so upset she needed time to cool down before she punished me. My punishment was that for the next year of my life I would get up every Saturday and polish every piece of wood in the house. Banisters, kitchen cabinets, wood floors, bathroom fixtures, and of course, floor boards. It was awful. To this day I hate to dust and polish. It would take me until lunch time to finish and then mom would inspect and I'd sometimes have to do things again. Just as a reminder of my misdeed, my mom decided never to get the floor board fixed. Still in the formal living room, behind the furniture in front of the big bay window is my floor board. Just as scratched up as the day I did it.

So there is a reason for my nostalgia. We have been loving living in our new apartment. Granted, we didn't build it and it's not our dream place, but it's the nicest place we've ever had and we try very hard to take care of it. Well, not too long ago, in preparation for the new baby I decided to get blackout curtains for the kids' room. I had sheers up but Nate had a hard time sleeping in the afternoons because the sun would shine directly into his room. I don't want to have that problem with two kids and nap time is a coveted time and I know I'll be looking forward to it every day. So, I went into Nate's room to take down the sheers and what did I see?


I know the pictures aren't that good, but it's purple crayon all over the window sill. Nate's learning to write his alphabet and he loves to draw smiley faces. My first reaction was laughter. What can you do? And then I couldn't help but recognize the similarities between my story and the story unfolding in front of me. Of course I knew who did it and all the small pieces of purple crayon I'd been picking up started to make sense, but if I had another child there would still be no doubt. "NAT E ". The top picture is what made me smile the most. We'd been working on writing "S"s. It's a really tough letter for him and he'd get so frustrated at the table when we'd practice. It looks like he decided to practice on his own! It's just sweet how determined he is to get it right. Anyway, I called Nate into his room and pointed it out. He smiled and was so proud to tell me he'd done it. That made me smile more because he didn't know he'd done anything wrong. I explained to him that we only write on paper, not window sills. He said he wouldn't do it again. So far, no more surprises have been unearthed.

After the curtains were hung, I called my mom and told her the story. She and I had a great laugh out of it. So what do you think? Is naughtiness hereditary?