A Tale of Tic Tac

Once upon a time, there was a very clever girl who spent an evening plotting what she hoped would be a foolproof plan to get out of doing her school work.

And so the next morning she tried to strike up a bargain.

"Mom," she asked, "How about if I spend the day cleaning my room instead of doing school?"

Finding this largely humorous - the mom being gifted with extraordinary insight (her beloved child was willing to bargain away an hour's worth of school work for a day's worth of cleaning ??) - realized that since she was almost through her school anyway, a day off couldn't hurt. Besides, she was very interested to see what kind of a job her daughter would do in cleaning up her room. She gave her the green light to do just that, but warned her very seriously that she would be checking up on her to make sure she was finally getting rid of her little piles of junk.

"I know that I have to get rid of some stuff, mom. I already plan to throw away my empty Tic Tac container, you know."

Again, barely holding back her laughter, the mother told her that she would have to do better than that. She would have to get rid of all of her Tic Tac containers.

"All of them?!" the girl asked incredulously. "But mom, I can't. The other Tic Tac containers have stuff in them!"

These are the times in which this particular mom finds it impossible not to think in "sarcasms".

The morning went on with the girl sorting stuff and talking to herself, not realizing that her mom heard every word she said.

"Hmm. Since I have three of these I'll have to get rid of one," she said meditatively.

....and,

"I can't throw this away. This is the first picture I ever drew of a tree."

A little while later, the girl proudly presented a small grocery bag full of trash. One small bag out of a POTENTIAL TRUCK LOAD FULL OF GARBAGE. And she informed her mom that she managed to throw out all of her Mix & Matches. All of them.

Impressive.

This little tale is true. Every word of it. Well, mostly.

Perhaps you know this little girl. Perhaps you know her mother.

And perhaps you know the inevitable outcome of her daughter's beloved Tic Tac containers.

And what the eventual outcome will be of approximately 50 percent of the contents of her room.

Perhaps you know as well that a trip to grandmas is very quickly approaching.