Julia's foolery

Julia has been big on trying to fool me lately, although her attempts to fool me are completely contrived and often require her to request that I pretend not to know what she's doing. For instance, whenever she plays with her Little People house, she loves to press both the telephone (which makes a ringing sound) and the doorbell (which ding-dongs appropriately.) If I forget to respond to either sound, she gives me a gentle, subtle reminder: "Mom, do you think that's our phone ringing?" or "Mom, can you say, 'Who's ringing our doorbell?" After I respond as prompted, she then exclaims with delight, "It's not our phone/doorbell! It's in my LITTLE PEOPLE HOUSE!" She is all the more delighted by my fakely enthusiastic reply: "Oh, you tricked me! I thought it was the REAL phone/doorbell!"

Yesterday, as she sat playing with her My Little Ponies, she began singing the theme song to the My Little Pony show. "Mom!" she called from the living room. "Did you think you heard the tv and you heard that 'My Little Pony' is on?" Attempting to be honest but to also appease her, I responded, "Well, I thought I heard the theme song, and I was wondering where it came from, then I realized you were singing it! It sounded just like the real thing!"

Not good enough, I guess.

"But Mom," she persisted, "were you thinking, Julia must be watching 'My Little Pony' in the living room because you heard that music?" "Uh... yes," I answered, breaking down in my attempt to be truthful. "It was just me singing!" she announced joyously. After I heaped praise on her for sounding like the authentic theme song and for tricking me so thoroughly, she seemed placated, and went back to playing her game.

I guess the implausibility of the entire situation was too much even for her, though, because a few minutes later she asked me, confused, "But mom, how did you think the tv was able to turn on? Did you think I turned on the show without asking if it was okay to watch it?"

Oh, Julia, I guess your rule-abiding conscience just had to get in the way of your fanciful imagination and ruin the fun of pretending you fooled me.