Revenge

Last night we had the collision of two perfect moments at my house. Hale and Brad were wrestling on the couch when it took an ugly turn, like it nearly always does. Her newly pierced ears were bumped by Brad's flailing arms as he tried to avoid her tickling. This resulted in Halle running upstairs in tears and Brad sending me after her since she was no longer speaking to him. This was the beginning.
When I found her upstairs, she was in my bathroom crying and nursing her ears. Since we were beyond the point of reason, I did what any good mother would do when their child has been wronged and suggested revenge. This brought an immediate sparkle to her eye and grin to her face. My idea was toothpaste. I said "Get some on your finger, and go down like you're hugging dad and smear it on him." In my mind, this looked like a pea size amount of toothpaste gently smeared across Brad's cheek. As with most things, though, it did not go the way I imagined.
Before Halle could enact Operation Make-Dad-Pay, Brad came upstairs and laid across the bed. At the exact moment Halle is plotting her revenge, Brad looks at me unknowingly and says,"I've just decided to adopt an I don't care attitude about everything." How appropriate.
So now that he's laying down the hug would be awkward but ever the quick thinker, Halle came up with her own way. She asked me to pull Brad's shirt up like I was going to scratch his back and ever so discreetly block his view of the incoming wrath of Halle-which turned out to be a handful of gel toothpaste (again,not the kind I was imagining as it is a lot goopier and, well, disgusting) smeared all over his back. Gel toothpaste, by the way, is remarkably colder than you might think right out of the tube. Brad eventually catches his breath, finds out what has just happened to him, and asks Halle to get a wash rag to clean it off. I think he was envisioning a warm rag- but again- this would be wrong to assume. Halle throws, literally, an ice cold rag across his back. I really thought he was going to come up off the bed this time.
What is the point of this whole story? I guess the first lesson here would be- don't mess with Halle. Second- it's just a whole lot like life. The moment you decide nothing is going to bother you- something will come along to see if you really mean it.