A Taste For Steel

Last night MJ and I were talking about how to get my writing published, and we took our eyes off LMJ. She was playing nicely in the kitchen when I saw her reaching for something out of the corner of my eye. I turned just in time to see her pulling a bread knife off the counter like she was King Arthur freeing Excalibur. No big deal, she was less than ten feet away from me, I would just ask her for the knife. It wasn’t time to panic yet. Then she turned towards me and started waving the knife like she was Inigo Montoya. We had been playing and she was kind of wound up. I was glad that I didn’t have six fingers on my right hand. Panic was becoming a more appropriate response rapidly. I thought about rushing her, but I was afraid that at least one of us would wind up bleeding. I need to mention that the bread knife has a nine inch blade, so for her size it was a broad sword or a katana, something designed with bad intentions. I decided to try to talk her down. I started by asking her for the knife, which she immediately stopped brandishing and gave to me. Then I told her we needed to talk. I was trying to be a parent in control like those stupid parenting magazines and the Supernanny tell me I should. I don’t remember the article about how to stop your two year old from seeing her enemies driven before her and hearing the lamentations of their women. MJ thought my “we need to talk” line was funny, but she hadn’t seen warrior princess mode. I was hopped up on adrenaline by this point so what I wanted to say was, “Don’t swing f***in’ knives!” which fall into the same category as “Don’t set sh*t on fire!” I think “we need to talk” was a great way to start. We did need to talk, and talk we did. Now, not playing with knives is a hard and fast rule just like no screaming or running in the store. The whole thing took less than a minute, including the new rule conversation, but knife wielding babies makes for vivid memories.