Part II - The Dresser Caper
By Victor Epp
It can't be corroborated just what it was that caused the dresser caper. Certainly oatmeal cookies couldn't have been the cause. But given the success of the oatmeal cookie caper, it was inevitable that this would follow. Suffice it to say that once you get the idea that good things are found in high places, then reaching ever higher is bound to be your destiny.
Now you have to understand that we weren't exactly present as observers to all the details of these adventures. It's a good thing too, because otherwise they would never have happened in the first place and who knows, our boy may never have become the achiever he was. On the other hand, we weren't exactly absent either. But how many eyes can you have in your head at once? So in the telling of these stories, the blow-by-blow details come not from eyewitness accounts as much as they do from knowing exactly how his mind worked in putting his body into action. I've proven over and over that my descriptions are absolutely accurate to the last details. It's a mysterious gift that comes from parenthood.
In this case though, his mother was in on the finale, and what a finale it was! Slippery hardwood floors and a flannel diaper avoided a tragedy and made it all the more spectacular.
As I recall we had just bought new furniture for his bedroom. No, that's not right either. Oh I know, I had just painted it all with that new-fangled Flecto paint that had to be applied with a sprayer. It was awful stuff to work with, but once it was on and dried it was indestructible. Besides his bed, there was a dresser and a four-drawer chest. Now to call this a dresser caper is a bit of a misnomer. The summit this time was the top of the chest of drawers.
Again, to capture the picture of the event you have to be able to visualize this blond tousle headed Sir Edmond Hillary with hopeful little blue eyes fixed on discovering the world - the big high world. With that in mind, you can also picture the chest of drawers, not too big, but children's size. I mention that because it didn't have the big heavy drawers like in today's oversized furniture. In other words, it was possible for a pint-sized kid to open drawers, even if only enough to peek inside.
Well, you guessed it. If you start opening drawers from the bottom you can build kind of a staircase to the top. But there's a catch because it can get very tricky; - physics again. See, as you climb up the drawers, the center of gravity changes with the redistribution of weight. This would all be fine if, when you grab on to the top-drawer handle, it didn't slide open.
Well it wasn't fine this time because he did grab it and it did slide open - just as his mother was coming to check up on him. Now try to keep your mind on the action here. Down comes the chest of drawers like a giant tree, our boy hanging on for dear life. The open drawers slow the fall somewhat while his mother stands there paralyzed in absolute terror. There's a loud crash and the kid comes squirting out from under the chest like toothpaste being extruded out of a tube. The slippery hardwood floor sends the chest one way and it's extruded victim the other way.
The bedlam that followed had more to do with hysteria than reason. But I don't want to spoil such a spectacular show with that. Evel Knievel would have been right proud.
