The four of us and Ted went up to Hi-Fi Buys to strike a deal on a couple of Sony D11 portable CD players. $129.95 at Service Merchandise, but SM didn’t have them in stock and wouldn’t for a while. In America, when you’re ready to buy, you don’t want to have to wait.

The SM retail price was $149.95. Hi-Fi Buy’s retail price was $200 with a retail price of $149.95. The salesmen at Hi-Fi Buys must get paid more. We asked if they could come down on that price. It was closing time. The salesman ran into the back to talk to some unknown authority and came back with a $142 price.

We got two.

When I came home last night from work I found a mountain of black eletrical tape wadded up on the ironing board. Just before dinner I asked who had gotten into Dad’s black tape. I added quickly that I didn’t want to hear anyone say, “I didn’t.” I just wanted the person who did it to say “I did Dad.”

Danny took a couple of very small steps forward with a look of concern on his face. He was wearing his cowboy hat, carrying his gun, and wearing a black mask with Nicole’s Halloween cape.

“Who did?” I asked looking around the room.

A little hand raised up from under the cape. The hand did its best not to be noticed, hiding next to Danny’s cheek.

Kathy cracked up. Then she told about his project of dragging the rocking chair over to the steps, wrapping up a cross bar with tape, unrolling the tape to the top of the stairs, and wrapping a leg of the ironing board.

“Why did you want to tie the rocking chair and ironing board together?” I asked Danny.

“I wanted to make a tunnel.”

Kathy, between laughs, told Danny that he had done a good thing to tell the truth.

I’m still out a whole roll of electrical tape. It’s very hard to raise children with a mother who can’t control her laughter.