No Allowance

“You’re always making up stories to get me to do stuff you don’t want to do,” my son said when he was eight-years-old.

“You’re only saying that to get out of doing your chores,” I said.

“I’m not either, and you know it,” he said.

“What story have I made up?” I asked.

“Well,” he answered, “like the one where you said you’d toss me through a portal into another dimension if I didn’t clean up my room.”

“That’s not made-up,” I returned. “What do you think happened to your older brother?”

“What older brother?” he asked.

I smiled, “Exactly.”