Kids are the best. Lately we've been experimenting with giving Jon a little more freedom to play with things around the house as long as there's no possibility of him hurting himself. And thus far, he's proven worthy of the trust given - he's managed not to break any of the furniture, computer parts, his little brother, etc...

Until today.

He's been scooting his chair over to the kitchen and playing with the microwave a little under our supervision without any incident. He hasn't even been bothered to actually turn it on yet. But today he decided to mix two of his favorite things: food and cars. So he snuck his chair over there quietly and very nonchalantly placed two of his metal toy cars into the microwave, chose an acceptable cooking time, and pushed the 'start' button.

Well, as you can imagine, this didn't go unnoticed for long. In fact, what brought our attention to the problem wasn't the poor microwave flashing or the smell of burning plastic, but rather Jon's shouts of dismay at watching his favorite cars light on fire.

I quickly ran over and moved Jon out of harms way, but next came the spilt-second decision of how to stop the microwave. And for all those years of sitting in a classroom, I made a very wrong choice - to open the microwave just at the very moment when one of the cars' plastic wheels exploded from the heat. So now I've got an hysteric little boy, a charred microwave, two cars on fire in it, and reeking plastic shrapnel all over the kitchen. Way to go, Dad.

Unfortunately, only after I got it all cleaned up did I have the sense of humor about it to actually get a remembrance picture of the Boy with the mangled car and the microwave. We'll try to remember to bring this up when he's 16 and asking for the keys to the car.