The first thing the baby did wrong was to tear pages out of her books. So we made a rule that each time she tore a page out of a book she had to stay alone in her room for four hours, behind the closed door. She was tearing out about a page a day, in the beginning, and the rule worked fairly well, although the g and screaming from behind the closed door were unnerving. We reasohat that was the price you had to pay, or part of the price you had to pay. But then as her grip improved she got to tearing out two pages at a time, which mea hours alone in her room, behind the closed door, which just doubled the annoyance for everybody. But she wouldnt quit doing it. And then as time went on we begaing days wheore out three or fes, which put her alone in her room for as much as sixteen hours at a stretch, interfering with normal feeding and w my wife. But I felt that if you made a rule you had to stick to it, had to be sistent, otherwise they get the wrong idea. She was about fourteen months old or fifteen months old at that point. Often, of course, shed go to sleep, after an hour or so of yelling, that was a mercy. Her room was very nice, with a nice wooden rog horse and practically a hundred dolls and stuffed animals. Lots of things to do in that room if you used your time wisely, puzzles and things. Unfortunately sometimes when we opehe door wed find that shed torn more pages out of more books while she was inside, and these pages had to be added to the total, in fairness.
The babys name was Born Dan. We gave the baby some of our wine, red, white, and blue, and spoke seriously to her. But it didnt do any good.
I must say she got real clever. Youd e up to her where she laying on the floor, in those rare times when she was out of her room, and thered be a book there, open beside her, and youd i it and it would look perfectly all right. And then youd look closely and youd find a page that had otle er torn, could easily pass for ordinary wear-and-tear but I knew what shed done, shed torn off this little er and swallowed it. So that had to t and it did. They will go to ahs to thwart you. My wife said that maybe we were being tid and that the baby was losi. But I pointed out to her that the baby had a long life to live and had to live in the world with others, had to live in a world where there were many, many rules, and if you couldnt learn to play by the rules you were going to be left out in the cold with no character, shunned and ostracized by everyohe lo we ever kept her in her room secutively was eighty-eight hours, and that ended when my wife took the door off its hinges with a crowbar even though the baby still owed us twelve hours because she was w off twenty-five pages. I put the door ba its hinges and added a big lock, ohat opened only if you put a magic card in a slot, and I kept the card.
But things didnt improve. The baby would e out of her room like a bat out of hell and rush to the book, Goodnight Moon or whatever, and begin tearing pages out of it hand over fist. I mean thered be thirty-fes of Goodnight Moon on the floor in ten seds. Plus the covers. I began to get a little worried. When I added up her iedness, in terms of hours, I could see that she wasnt going to get out of her room until 1992, if then. Also, she was looking pretty wan. She hado the park in weeks. We had more or less of ahical crisis on our hands.
I solved it by declaring that it was all right to tear pages out of books, and moreover