Busted

Yesterday I set Handsome to practicing his music (which at this point in time means playing a xylophone) for 25 minutes, his allotted time. I went outside and started putting up the Christmas lights to the tune of Jingle Bells being plinked out again and again, the sound drifting out through the front window leading into the TV room. Pretty pleasant - he didn't sound bad at all. I was excited because I'd had a major Christmas miracle this year - when I got the lights out of the shed out back they all worked! Not one of them was causing a dead spot, all 900 lights were burning bright! That's not happened since we bought the house, a decade ago.

So the lights went up in a flash (pardon the pun), and I started to put my stuff away. I went to get the ladder down from the front of the house when I realized I was no longer hearing xylophone music, and I hadn't for a while. I crept up to the window that led into the TV room where Handsome was 'practicing'. I saw him sitting on the couch, easily eight feet away from his xylophone, and he appeared to be writing something.

I banged on the window, and I have to admit my fatherly heart took a great deal of pleasure in the amount of air he got when he jumped. I wish I'd had a stopwatch, I could have checked his hang-time.

"What are you doing?" I shouted through the glass, which only made his guilty expression go even more guilty. He held up his hand. In the palm were some pretty blue designs he'd been studiously working on until I interrupted.
"You're not practicing!"
"I just stopped for a second!"
"But you're not practicing!"
"It was just for a second!"
I left the window and went in the house. I reset the timer, which only had about 4 minutes on it, for 20 minutes.
"That doesn't count," I called out. "I'm resetting the timer!"
"But it was just two seconds!" he shouted from the TV room.
"I'm starting the timer. You have 20 minutes. Go!"
Only silence came from the room.
"Go!"
Nothing.
"Handsome?"
"I can't."
I went in the TV room and found him sitting behind the xylophone wearing a forlorn expression.
"I said go," I told him.
"I know," he said, "but I can't."
"Why?"
He looked still more sheepish.
"I can't find the sticks."
"Well, let's look for them," I said.
He began to tear the television room apart, but I decided to work smart, not hard. I went to look other places, away from the actual instrument.
I found them in the kitchen. On the table. Under a newspaper.
"Two seconds, huh?" I said when he came out to retrieve them. "Must have been a heck of a long two seconds!"
I walked over to the timer.
"You, my boy, are well and truly busted. You have 20 minutes. Go!"
I pushed "Start".

Talk to you later!