opening and closing

This morning, I came into the kitchen and whacked my head on an open cabinet door.  I knew who left it open.  The same kid who does it all the time.  So I called the offending child and said, "What do you do if you open something?"  Having heard this thousands of times, she parroted the right response: "Close it."  Then I said, "I have told you this many, many times, and I'm tired of telling you, so from now on, you are going to tell yourself.  Whenever I find something open, I'm going to call you over to close it, and you are going to say ten times, 'When I open it, I will close it.'" 

One minute later, I went in the bathroom and slammed into an open drawer.  Mike's drawer.  Mike certainly wouldn't leave his drawer open, but why would Sarah be opening that?  I called her.  She came.  She looked at the drawer, cleared her throat, and said, "When I open it, I will close it. When I open it, I will close it...." After ten times, I said, "Why did you open it?"  She said, "To get Daddy's brush."  I asked her why she was brushing her hair with Daddy's brush instead of her own.  She said, "Oh, I wasn't brushing MY hair with it.  I was brushing Marty."  *SIGH*

By nine o'clock this morning, she had repeated the opening and closing mantra fifty times!  Better her than me I guess.