When all is Quiet...

It was the summer of '91. I was only 18 years-old and I had been babysitting for my sister everyday during the summer from sun-up to about 5pm when a saviour would finally come home from work and take over. But until then, he was all mine.

Conventiently (for everyone else) his crib was kept in my bedroom. I quickly became accustomed to the routine: intially wake up at 6:30am when I heard my nephew babbling, feign sleeping until 7am when he started crying, get up, put the bottle in the microwave for 15 seconds, give it to Bryan, change his diapers while he was drinking milk, put him back in the crib, and go back to sleep until 7:30am, then get up when Bryan tossed the bottle out of the crib and started crying, and make sure Mom or Dad or someone else was awake to keep an eye on him, then dive back in to bed until 8-9am until Mom or Dad went to work. Then I had to keep him entertained, fed, well-rested, and safe until about 2pm when it was time for nap.

It was during one of these nap-times when I thought everything was going as usual. I had put Bryan to bed and went to the living room for about 20 minutes or so. All was quiet. As I was recuperating in the living room, I heard an odd rustling sound that I couldn't place. The sound was faint enough to make me think it was just my imagination, or perhaps soft enough to go unnoticed with my fatigue. Either way, I didn't follow up, but since I was up and out of the chair, I might as well check up on the little sack of potatoes.

There was a hole in my bedroom door that I could peer through to check up on him without opening the door and waking him up, which I used from time to time. And as I looked in to the room I saw Bryan, not sleeping soundly in bed, which he should have been. Instead, I saw him standing on the bed, reaching up, desperately trying to push my Stanley Cup poster back on to the wall. As he did this, the poster was making a faint rustling sound. Apparently, someone had been a bit mischevious.

Seeing this desicration of one of the Holiest of symbols, I opened the door. Bryan, upon seeing me said to me in Chinese,

"Uncle! Help me!" The funny part (for me) was hearing this 2 year-old plead for help for something as inconsequential as a 3 dollar poster. Okay, granted it was of the Stanley Cup, but still only a poster, nonetheless. I'll never forget the terror in his voice; it was as if it was a life-or-death situation and that the discovery of his mischievious behaviour would end in an ultimately painful demise.

Had Mom discovered him first, it may have. But it was me, the Yummy-fu.

I let out an exasperated "Ai-yaaaah!". Upon hearing this, Bryan burst in to tears as if pleading and groveling with the gods to spare his life. But it was no big deal; I put the poster back on the wall, gave my nephew a hug, told him to be a good boy next time and put him back to bed.

I learned something valuable that day: when 2 years old are quiet, they're either sleeping, badly hurt or sick, or up to no good.