“Don’t touch that, it’s hot!”
 
“No, it’s not, see.” Ohmie touched the stove. “You just turned it on, like three seconds ago. It’s electric, and even if I touched the burner it … see I’ll …”
 
“Don’t you touch that, young man!”
 
Ohmie knew to back off, even if only a smidge. Nicely two years old, he could read her pretty well, knowing her limits and also knowing the calculus, whether the next degree was worth the risk. Such as reaching into the candy dish knowing full well that it was twenty-two minutes until lunch time. Proceeding past the “Don’t touch that, young man!” got him at least four M&Ms and a stern look, but no promise of a beating. Besides, Mom’s beating was like nothin’. Only thing was, he’d learned that the best results followed him producing at least a whimper.
 
“’Piderman,” Ohmie nearly shrieked that next morning.
 
“Your Spiderman shirt is dirty, Ohmie. I’ll wash it tomorrow on laundry day. How about Sponge Bob?”
 
Ohmie thought for the briefest moment and then stomped his foot declaring for Spiderman.
 
“Don’t you stomp your foot at me, young man.”
 
Ohmie stomped his foot, a certain defiance behind his grin. May, with enough force to make her point, immediately stomped her foot down on top of Ohmie’s protesting foot. His eyes opened to their maximum. As soon as she let up, Ohmie burst from the room, heading for the laundry room. May was three steps behind him with a red tee shirt. Before Ohmie could find the dirty Spiderman shirt she’d convinced him to wear the red one since Spiderman was mostly red, and that he could wear his Superman cape, too. The winning wrangle was that he could be Super-Spiderman.
 
Ten minutes into play, racing from room to room, Ohmie paused long enough to say, “Ha ha. I stomped my foot!” He was out of range before May could turn around. It took her only an instant to let it go, figuring the victor carefully picked her battles.
 
Lunch was spaghettios with franks. Ohmie knew to push the franks off his plate and onto the table. His mother never made him finish those, but if on the plate … His complaining that they tasted like turkey entrails hadn’t gone over well. Scattering them off the plate, but not in a single pile worked best. Even using the plate with the stupid dividers, he could get them scattered and smeared around. But it took care, any sort of pattern and she’d prob’ly figure him out. New tricks, like launching them across the table while appearing to scoop the little lumps of ground gristle always worked twice, but no more. After the second launch, she knew to watch him.
 
Getting lima beans off his plate usually took more dramatic moves, like spilling his drink. As soon as May started the table mop up, well, no more lima beans.
 
“Can I go outside, Mom? It’s not rainin’, freezin’, or blisterin’ hot.” Ohmie had prepared for the usual protest. Hearing none, he continued. “That’s why Daddy built the fence, remember?” Waiting no longer, he bolted for the door, “You can watch me through the window while you wash dishes. ’Kay, I’ll be in the back yard.” After a moment’s effort with the child-proof door handle cover, Ohmie gave up and with an old fashion soda pop/beer can opener, jimmied the door latch bolt open, scooting outdoors to his mother’s unheard admonishment to be careful.
 
The first thing Ohmie did was to kick his soccer ball in the general direction of a metal-framed web backstop. Naturally, the ball sailed over the net and over the back fence which separated the yard from a wooded area. It was a footrace, Ohmie to the fence, and his mother to the back door, where she got held up for what seemed an eternity attempting to grip the child-proof knob cover.
 
“Ohmie!” she screamed to the tempered glass, and again once outside. “Ohmie! Stay in the … yard.” Her yard coincided with Ohmie’s crash to the ground on the other side of the three-foot-high chain link fence. “OHMIE!” This time she got his attention.
 
“Hey, Mom. I got it! It went over the fence.”
 
Simultaneously, as Ohmie threw the ball back over and scaled the fence to get back in, May yelled for him to get back in the yard, to never climb the fence again, and that she’d warned Ohmie Senior that it needed to be at least ten feet tall.
 
“Mom,” Ohmie said, as he advanced, “if a person can climb three feet, he can climb a hunnerd. It’s one step after another, like walkin’. Besides, it’s the same dirt and grass, and weeds over there as it is here. And nobody owns it. That’s the city’s green zone.”
 
With that, as May continued ranting about how she didn’t care how high the fence was and that he knew he wasn’t supposed to climb it, Ohmie ran toward his swing set, one of the old style, steel pipe sets that went out of fashion with the wooden fort slash castle affairs. “Watch me, Mom. Loop-de-loop! I’m gonna make it go over the bar!”
 
“Ohmie!” May knew that simple physics would not allow him to do the loop-de-loop, but couldn’t stand to watch when at his apex, his little bottom left the seat. Turning away, she wondered if she could devise a governor of some sort. Or Ohmie senior could.
 
“Watch me, Mom!”
 
Afraid not to, May turned to look just in time to see him leap from the same seat-clearing apex toward his sand box a dozen feet away. Just barely clearing the two-by-twelve lumber frame, Ohmie tumbled forward, planting his face onto a metal Tonka truck. Running to her bleeding and staggering son, May would have been embarrassed to admit that her first thought was that she’d told Ohmie Senior to buy the boy plastic toys.
 
“Ohmie! Oh…!” She was prepared to award Ohmie a few behind swats until she saw the blood. As she described later, it was pouring from a lightning streak cut in the exact center of his forehead, Ohmie tried to stand and grasp his head at the same time. His eyes and face by then nearly covered with blood.
 
It was a seven-minute drive to the hospital. May knew because she had driven Ohmie Senior the same route more than once. It would take an ambulance at least six minutes to get to her – if they had no other emergency waylaying them. Not the timid one, May preferred action than sitting about depending on others. She grabbed the two-year old up and with him over her shoulder, flew through the house, grabbing a dish towel and her purse. Taking the time to buckle him in the child seat, she pressed the towel to his head, tying it in the back. “Now don’t go to sleep, Ohmie. Sing to me. Sing the Phineas and Ferb song.”
 
“Mom, that’s for little kids.” Ohmie was coming around.
 
They got back home with six butterfly, steri-strip stitches at the same time as Ohmie Senior arrived, leaving work when May called.
 
“You shoulda seen me, Dad! I almost stuck the landing!” Ohmie silenced himself with his father’s through-the-eyebrows look.
 
Little Ohmie tucked in for the night, May announced that she was ready to find a pre-school for Ohmie. “That, or we get a sitter and I go back to work,” May stated, no uncertainty in her tone.
 
Both May and Ohmie Senior flashed back to their two singular efforts with babysitters, learning that the word had gotten out, and that no one would watch him unless he was already asleep before they arrived.
 
“I’ll find a pre-school,” Ohmie said.