Lion is concerned about what the pennies in his bank mean. Is it a swat per penny? Is it five swats per penny? Ten? Hard swats? Medium swats? How much trouble is he really in?
The answer is, I don’t know. I mean, if he had items on his list he wouldn’t know how many swats each was worth. How many swats would he get for interrupting versus dropping food if it was just an item on the list? He didn’t seem concerned then. [Lion – That’s not entirely correct. I would love to know, but asking gets a negative response that often results in more swats.] And I didn’t know how many swats he would get for those infractions either. As he listed them off and I decided how much he should be punished for each item, I’d decide how hard to hit for each. Or maybe it was just how many to hit for each. There is no set number or hardness for the swats. That would be boring and predictable. 2.0 is neither.
What I did suggest is that maybe, if we aren’t remembering the exact infraction, I should use a penny for small things, a nickel for more severe, and so on up to a quarter for the “your ass will be on fire for a week” items. That way I can at least remember how annoyed I was at the time I dropped that coin in the bank. Maybe pennies are for the little annoyances like dropped food or minor interruptions. I probably should have given him a quarter when he spilled vegetable oil all over the kitchen the other day. Or maybe it should have been a dime since it was an accident. Things he can control like interrupting should have more severe consequences.
In reality, it all depends on how annoyed I am in general at the time. Is the dog underfoot? Did I just get everything all set up the way I wanted it while cooking dinner and Lion waltzes in and rearranges things? Is Lion underfoot? Did he just say something that annoyed the crap out of me and he should know not to say it? If the answer is yes to any of those questions (and those are just examples) then when he interrupts or drops food, the penny could very well be a nickel or dime. And if the answer is yes to multiple questions, we’re straying into quarter territory.
So, literally, his ass depends on keeping 2.0 happy and stress-free. I always say, “Don’t poke the bear.” Perhaps I should say, “Don’t poke 2.0.”
