February 27, 2004 - Friday
When I picked Harry up from school today he told me that he had thrown away his yellow spoon with the sparkles in the handle. He, somewhat and surprisingly confidently, said it was "by accident" and I'm not sure whether that's because he was saying "by" instead of his usual "on accident" and knowing it was better grammar or whether he was simply confident that it wasn't all that big a deal. Indeed, it was only a plastic spoon and, thus, no big deal, but maybe if he just threw away at lunch I could save it for him. After all, it did have sparkles in the handle.

"Where did you throw it away?" I asked.
"In the garbage, but it was just an accident," he answered, re-enforcing his relative innocence.
"That's OK, Harry, but which garbage did you throw it in? Was it this one?" I asked pointing at the main garbage can in the Pre-K room.
"Yeah."

Perhaps my mistake was offering an answer, but I, happily at first, pilfered through the garbage for several minutes without success. Admittedly, my frustration grew as the first layer of paper and crafts garbage gave way to a second layer of lunch time leftovers, but I figured I was just getting close.

"Harry, are you sure it was this garbage?" again with the power of suggestion.
"Yes, but it was by accident," he said from the position he had assumed over amid the toy blocks.
"Did you tell [teacher] Kelly about it?" I asked beginning to doubt the reliability of the witness.
"Yeah"
"What did she do about it?"
"Nothing."

I was pretty sure at this point that I didn't have all the right information and decided to stop my independent search for the spoon in favor of reconnaissance. I went out to ask Kelly outside in the playground with the rest of the class. She told me that he told her he had accidentally dropped his plastic food container into the trash and she had fished that out, but she didn't know about the spoon. Then, she reminded me it had been a little hectic at lunch because they had had a picnic lunch outside in the nice weather.

"Darn," I think to myself. She had told me that earlier before I looked in the garbage inside and I should have put the pieces together myself.

At dinner, Harry mentioned to mommy that he had lost his spoon in the garbage. I piped up and said, somewhat bitterly, how I had spent a long time looking in the wrong garbage can for it because Harry told me it was there. Mommy, having packed Harry's lunch that morning, got up and went to the drawer.

"Oh my, I think I forgot to pack Harry's spoon this morning." And, a moment later after opening the drawer, "yeah, here it is."

I admit to feeling a lot more whimsical about the entire incident writing it now, a little separated from the it in time and with the rather humbling, but humorous realization that it is not likely to be the only or worst time I will be duped or cajoled, innocently or not, into sifting through, literal or figurative, garbage on behalf of my dear son.


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