A-Thievin' the Knife

Hick doesn't know it yet, but the topic of the next "This Is the Time of Day When We Talk About the Most Recent Things You've Done Wrong" summit will be his sticky fingers.

Hick recently asked for some Honey Nut Cheerios. Or as he calls them, Honey Nut CHERRY-O's. He says he's going to lay off the Casey's donuts for breakfast. We'll see. He said he wanted the cereal to use up his FREE gallon of Ponytail Guy milk. Whatever. I bought the cereal on Sunday. It's from Save A Lot, so a generic form. Probably called something like Nectar Almond-Flavor Circus O's. I don't recall.

Anyhoo... I was going to bed on Monday at the time Hick was in the kitchen making his cereal at the cutting block. I'm pretty sure he would have used MY space on the counter, but I was standing there turning off my cell phone.

I vaguely remember Hick at the cutting block, trying to tear open the plastic bag inside the cereal box, using his weak hand and his PopArm. Then he poured cereal into a Styrofoam bowl, added milk from the gallon jug, and started slicing a banana on top.

I keep a kitchen knife on the cutting block. A butter knife. I use it for hacking ice cubes that stick to the back of the bin in FRIG II's freezer. I need it daily. Monday afternoon, it was not there. Well! It's NOT-HEAVEN to need a butter knife for hacking, and not have one within reach. So I had to walk THREE WHOLE STEPS to the drawer to get another butter knife out of the drawer.

Tuesday, my replacement butter knife was gone! The neurons in my brain all fired at once, probably setting off a lightbulb-shaped glow over my lovely lady-mullet, and I realized what was happening to my ice chippers. HICK HAS BEEN TAKING THEM!

Not to store in a nest of rags and regrets, like a packrat. But to use for his breakfast banana-slicing. I had noticed he was using a butter knife, but only because of the freakish way he held it, so the slicing section was about half handle and half blade. I had no idea he didn't get his own knife, but had used MINE, specifically designated for ice-hacking. Then he laid the knife beside the sink. When I went to wash dishes, I noticed the sticky banana-pulp clinging. I had thought it was one of The Pony's butter knives, used for BUTTER, which he licks clean. 

Yeah. Hick has sticky fingers, and we're not talking about banana pulp. More like one of Fagan's boys, the rat-faced weasely kind, not that angelic Mark Lester as OLIVER! in the Academy-Award-winning movie from 1968. Hick is not a very artful dodger.