Genetics - Pre-Destined Disaster

My son is scaring the daylights out of me.

I always had a little smug part of me which would whisper, quietly, (very quietly, because I'm brutally aware of what happens to mortals who tempt fate) that my children, though very full-on and loud, were rarely naughty or cruel.
I'd compare The Boy to other little boys he'd play alongside in the sandpit who just couldn't understand the concept of 'boundaries' - whether they be garden borders or road-side pavements.
I still believe that's true - that my kids are good, nice kids (and loud, and full-on - I'm biased not delusional) but my son has discovered that the grass is a whole lot more interesting on the other side of those boundaries.

It all boils down to genetics, I've decided.
My in-laws love to tell the stories of The Man as a boy, and his earliest beginnings as a chef.
Seems one morning, during the weekly Saturday sleep-in, he decided to barbecue a family breakfast - in his sister's toybox, right alongside his infant sister's bed.
The Man's mother woke soon after the 'barbecue' blossomed out of control (insert images here of raging inferno black with the viscous smoke of cheap plastic toys melting into the carpet).
When they had stemmed the inferno they found char-grilled carrots and potatoes in the remains of the Holly Hobbie toybox.

I had a vision of the whole story, larger than life, when I found The Boy microwaving a slice of left-over pizza for 15 minutes this morning.

Then there's the story of The Man (and remember, these are all four-year-old stories - and my son is now, you guessed it, four) who was helping water the garden early one morning.
His mother had wandered inside while he hosed the front-yard roses and geraniums (more on the self-fulfilling prophecy of old-lady plants another day) when he caught sight of the family's new neighbour.
A curious and friendly little boy, he decided to introduce himself, and walked out onto the path and back in through the neighbour's front door - hose in hand.

Yesterday, my son pulled out all the dirty clothes from our new touch-button front-load washing machine, threw in his dirty jocks, and started the machine (the delicates cycle, would you believe? trust me - he needed the heavy-duty soak program for those skidmarks).

A few days ago I caught him digging his fruit toast out of the toaster with a plastic knife.

He started his own museum where he was storing eggs from the chicken coop in an old baking pan behind the water tank.
They'd gone blue!

Then, tonight, after deciding to take a new tack (the tried-and-true one of jumping up and down, screaming like a Glenside patient and threatening to take away his future pocket-money until he was old enough to get a part-time job was wearing a little thin on us all) and making a pact to explain myself better when I told The Kids 'yes' or 'no', I lined the pair of them up and explained mouse traps and why we shouldn't touch them.
I explained that we had mice at the moment and that, no, a cat wasn't the best option to get rid of them, not even a cute, cuddly, ginger kitten from The Girl's friend at school who had let her touch it and hold it and it was so fluffy...whew! I'll stop there. Trust me, The Girl didn't.
I sprung the trap in front of them with a chopstick and, satisfied by their shocked jump-backs, felt safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't touch the nasty little salami-baited monsters.
But tonight, after dinner, I found The Boy - in true Virgo fashion - collecting all the moustraps up and lining them together to make a more effective trap.

And next week, my Dad is going to take him fishing...
If he survives the holidays, I'm not sure I will.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
If he was related to The Boy or The Man it was to play with the razorblades and plastic bags on the other side.