First Big Boy Coffin

A while back, Steve and I started painting a jungle scene in Elijah’s closet. Diana wisely kicked us off the project because Eli would be out of college, married and painting a jungle scene in his own son’s closet by the time a certain artiste finished highlighting each hair on a monkey’s back.

Diana recently announced that we would be turning Eli’s jungle closet into a sleep area so the rest of his room could look bigger for the zero people who come through to buy our house. This involved throwing a miniature mattress and a couple pillows inside.

I immediately voiced my objection to the idea. For one, it prevented me from fulfilling a lifelong dream of buying a race car bed. Secondly, I felt forcing him to sleep in a closet was a mild form of abuse. Sleeping in the closet is for kids who are one crime away from being sent to “Boys’ Town.”

But Diana ignored my pleas and we unveiled the idea to Eli last Friday night. I bet Diana a million billion quadrillion dollars that we would spend the night fighting Eli to stay in his bed/closet since he had recently mastered the art of door opening.

But sure enough, he went right to sleep and we didn’t hear from him until 6:30 the next morning when he forgot he was in a closet instead of a crib and smashed his head on the low ceiling.

I ran into his room and crawled into the closet with him. I attempted to soothe him and convince him to go back to bed. As I stroked his hair, it dawned on me that his little closet bed seemed an awful lot like a coffin. The walls suddenly closed in on me and I distinctly heard the sound of dirt being shoveled on top of us.

I screamed, “Get me out of here!” and Eli said, “Watch Curious George?” Anything was better than experiencing a real life version of a Quentin Tarantino scene. I carried him downstairs where we enjoyed milk and early morning cartoons in the non-coffin confines of our living room.

p.s. I can’t take back the last blog post about Eli’s interest in his man-parts. Journalistic integrity. But Diana would like me to let all HamannEggs readers know our son is not a pervert and maybe I exaggerated a little. But not much.