Yesterday evening, at our friends' house: Mother and oldest daughter were out for the evening, the men were playing chess, I was curled up on the couch with the baby, the rest of the kids were downstairs in the basement, where there's a playroom, bathroom, laundry room, and sewing room.
Footsteps pounded on the stairs and Oscar emerged carrying an aerosol can.
OSCAR: Emergency! Look what I found.
ME: What is it?
CHRIS (Examining can): "Sewing Machine and Serger Cleaner." Thanks for bringing this up, Oscar.
ME (suspicious): Oscar, did anyone spray that stuff?
OSCAR: Yes!
ME: Who sprayed it?
OSCAR: Milo did!
ME: Where did he spray it?
OSCAR: On something made of metal!
ME: On what made of metal?
CHRIS (interrupting) Oscar, just take me downstairs and show me what happened.
Chris came back a few minutes later and proclaimed the situation taken care of. I never did find out what Milo had sprayed it on.
This happens a lot lately with Oscar: he'll come up the stairs shouting, "Dad! Dad! Something happened!" or "Mom! Come quick! Milo's doing something dangerous!" and then we will either have to run downstairs immediately to see for ourselves what has transpired (often, something along the lines of a collapsed tower of Legos), or we have to interrogate him for several minutes to determine what is actually going on.
I keep trying to explain the concept of "be specific" but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I don't want to spend precious seconds extracting from him the information that, say, Milo is peeling clementines with the boning knife, but on the other hand, I'm nursing the baby here.
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