Life with Tertius

I'm sliding a freshly filled ice cube tray into the freezer when I find something blocking it. Reaching in, I extract a roll of socks, nested like a matryoshka doll and frozen solid.

No need for an inquisition to locate the culprit. "Did you do this?" I demand, for form's sake, dangling the icy evidence in front of eight-year-old Tertius.

"Awesome!" he exclaims.

(It's hard to be stern in the face of such cheerful enthusiasm.)

- - - - 

"Go and brush your teeth," I tell Tertius, before leaving for school.

"I have already," he says.

"I don't think you did -- you haven't been upstairs long enough."

"I did!" he maintains.

"No, he didn't, Dad," comments Secundus, the Adjudicator. "He just wets his toothbrush, without using any toothpaste."

"I don't!" wails Tertius.

"I've seen you do it."

"You can't have done, I haven't even been in the bathroom!"

Perry Mason would have a field day.