I had so much fun writing this post on the Compliment Plot that it grew into a full-blown short story.  I hope you enjoy.

I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to it. I knew it wouldn’t end well. Why I let my wife talk me into it, I’ll never know. I should have walked away with a smile and a nod. Instead, I had to suffer the consequences and pay the ultimate price. Why did I listen to her?

It All Started When

It all started when Miss Donna had to leave school mid-semester for personal reasons. She was one of our daughter’s pre-K teachers, and the two had bonded right away. Colleen would come home from school chatting about some silly song they sang or joke they had shared. She loved her other teacher Miss Laura as well, but they had a different kind of bond.

On a dry and dusty afternoon, my wife and I drove out to “His Sweet Children Preschool” to pick up Colleen and say goodbye to Miss Donna, a simple task with repercussions I couldn’t foresee at that time.

Past a firehouse on a side road heading out of Austin, the school ducked behind a loose string of high cedar elm. Whenever I drove, I was halfway past before I had to slam the brakes and cut a sharp turn into the driveway. My wife slowed gracefully and pulled into an unmarked space.

I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt, and still I had to lift off my Mets cap and backhand the sweat from my forehead. Lana greeted a few Moms, who gathered on the porch to watch their kids play in the side-yard. Four- and five-year-olds climbed over a beached boat, and walked in the shade of a Lilliputian castle.

When we entered the classroom, Colleen was the last child left, not an unusual occurrence. I liked to bypass the early crowd. My wife believed my internal clock had been genetically modified to run fifteen minutes late. Was I the result of a genetic experiment gone horrible astray? I supposed it was possible, but I digress.

Miss Laura was reading a story to Colleen, while she sat on the ground. Miss Donna worked pickup detail, plucking stray toys off the floor and shelving them. As soon as she saw us, Colleen ran into my wife’s arms. “Mommy, Mommy!” Every parent stores a mental archive of these moments to arm themselves against later teenage tantrums.

“So you’re leaving us?” I said to Miss Donna.

“My Mom’s ill,” she said in her Scottish brogue. “She’s going to stay with us for a few months.”

My wife and I commiserated and offered the usual well-wishes.

“Colleen’s going to miss you,” I said. I wondered later what would have happened if I had kept my mouth shut. It was an innocuous comment and a truthful one taken on its own, but had I opened the door for what was about to come? Without thinking, I blurted out, “She always talks about you.”

“We’re all going to miss her,” said Miss Laura.

It was my wife’s turn. “Colleen loves you so much,” she said.

Miss Laura offered a terse nod as Miss Donna thanked us, but her easy smile had become a slit.

A Second Thought

Colleen played in the side yard for a short while after school. Lana chatted with a few of the other mothers, while I read the New York Post online and suffered through the travails of the Mets’ most recent loss. When it was time to go, Colleen put up the usual fight until I shoulder-hoisted her and flopped her into her car seat, where after a brief cry she conked out.

On the way home, I didn’t give the interaction with Colleen’s teachers a second thought and was prepared never to do so again, but after a few peaceful minutes Lana said, “I feel terrible.”

This didn’t faze me. With my wife, a pronouncement of this sort is often prelude to a description of some physical malady: a headache, a backache, a stomach-ache, or some new creation uniquely her own. She was the Rembrandt of body pain, developing her own vocabulary to describe an encyclopedia of discomforts. Given all this, I decided to opt for a generic response: “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m talking about Miss Laura.”

To complement my ‘I’m a toy without a battery’ expression, I said, “I’m not following.”

“Did you see how she walked away when we told Miss Donna how much Colleen loves her?”

I had been on the verge of erasing this entire event from memory as any reasonable husband would, and now I had to recall it. I played it again as best I could remember. “Yes,” I said, wondering what I had missed. Women possess advanced ‘slight’ detectors that no man can ever hope to match. Their ability to sense offences given and received surpasses SETI’s sensitivity to radio waves emanating from exoplanets a galaxy away.

“Did you see her expression?”

Since observation is not my strong suit, I decided to shift topics. “I have a question first,” I said.

“What?”

“Can we call them Laura and Donna? I feel like I’m five years old again when I say Miss Laura and Miss Donna.”

“Whatever.” She shifted right back. “But did you see how she walked away when we said how much Colleen loved Donna?”

“Maybe she just had things to do.”

“Maybe.” She pondered this. “I think we ought to say something nice to her.”

“Okay.” I liked simple solutions, and this seemed straightforward. Say something nice to someone. Even I could handle this.

“I don’t want her to think Colleen doesn’t love her. She might not treat her the same.”

“What do you think she’d do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think she’d do something to her?”

“I don’t know.” My daughter’s preschool teacher had morphed from saint to serial killer. “Nothing bad, but she might not pay as much attention to her.” Less Lizzie Borden, more Baby Jane Hudson.

Oblivious to emotional subtlety, I said, “Why don’t we just tell her how much Colleen loves her?”

She could have frozen my coffee with her sigh. “That’s so obvious.”

“All right. What’s your idea then?”

“I don’t know yet. We need to think of something to say, but in a way it doesn’t sound phony, like we’re trying to make up for not complimenting her today.”

And so it happened. Just like that, on the spot, she had hatched a compliment plot, and I was in on it. I may not have been the mastermind, but I was an accomplice. What was the punishment for aiding and abetting a forced compliment? I didn’t know, but I was sure it would be substantial.

“Let’s ruminate on it,” I said, one of my favorite procrastination expressions.

My wife minded the road, her internal sprockets whirring. “Okay,” she said.

Days Passed

Days passed, and I didn’t mention the Compliment Plot again. I had moved on, and hoped she had too. I’d been tense the previous few days as I anticipated that she would resurrect the idea at any moment, but she had seemed to let it go. I was starting to relax again.

We were lounging in the living room one night, Lana on the couch, me in the recliner, an episode of “The Knick” on TV. Colleen was in bed. It was our time to unwind. I leaned back and turned the page on a Bret Anthony Johnston novel.

“Here’s the plan,” she said. She dropped a half-crocheted snowman onto her thighs.

I lay the open book down on my belly. “What plan?” said I, even though I knew exactly what she meant. The anxiety ants began their slow crawl in my belly.

“The plan to compliment Miss Laura.”

We were back on formal terms with the teachers. “Are you sure you really want to go through with this?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if it backfires? What if this compliment blows up in our faces, and we’re the ones who get burned? What if we get caught red-handed delivering a false compliment? I don’t want to take the rap for this! I’m not going to take the fall for you, baby!”

She stared at me. I stared back. I had laid it on the line. I wasn’t going down for her.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“I’m nobody’s patsy,” I said.

“Again, are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Here’s the plan. All you have to do is…” I could feel my defenses wither. Her web of compliments entangled me in its sticky strands, and I had no exit.

Don’t Forget Our Plan

Three rows of children in paper-feathered headbands and macaroni necklaces faced a standing room only audience of parents. I adjusted the strap on my video camera, tightening to the thickness of my hand, and pressed the Record button.

The HSC Thanksgiving Show kicked off with “Love Your Family”. I should have felt joy; instead, I felt panic. A sense of impending doom crescendoed during the performance of “Wise Old Owl”. The camera shook. When they wound up the show with “The Lord is Good to Me”, my wife leaned over and whispered, “Don’t forget our plan.”

I shivered. How could I forget? Lana and I were going to kill Miss Laura… with compliments. We would take turns assaulting her with niceties willy-nilly, hoping to fawn our way back into her good graces, while the other guarded Colleen. Where would this end?

After hugs for our little one, she and I walked outside with a plate of food while Lana fought round one. I needed nourishment for the mission. And sugar. A half-dozen chocolate chip cookies and two brownies later, Lana returned. She leaned towards me. “You’re up. I complimented her hair.”

I nodded at my co-conspirator and walked inside. After scanning the crowd for the innocent victim. I found her queuing for food. So innocent. I sidled up behind her. She had no idea what was about to begin.

I peered over her shoulder, in as noncreepy a creepy manner as I could. “That’s a lovely dress, Miss Laura.” I was the five-year-old boy again.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Have you lost weight?”

“No.” She peered back at me, as though I were some rare bird that had pecked on her window.

“Because you look thinner.”

“No, not a pound.” She took a big ‘Lord, help me get through this’ inhale. “Thank you though.”

Too transparent. Had she seen through me? “Are these your chocolate chip cookies, Miss Laura? Because, they’re delicious.”

“No, not mine.”

I was getting desperate. “How about these brownies?” I pointed at the ones I’d glommed. “They too are delicious.”

“No, not the brownies either. I made the finger sandwiches. Have you tried them?”

I looked at the stack of tiny triangles: ham and cheese on white bread agog with mayo. I froze, turned to stone by the Medusa of condiments: mayonnaise. Too perilous for Perseus’s shield, it was one of the deadliest substances known to mankind, a substance so vile that it was on the FDA’s Most Wanted List, so dangerous that the Discovery Channel was contemplating replacing “Shark Week” with “Mayo Month”. This stuff could kill you.

I’d encountered this villain in the past in the form of a mayonnaise cake (The Cake Auction, November 2014). Back then, I was lucky to escape with my life. Now, my old nemesis was back as finger food. On white bread no less. I stifled a gag.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Oh sure, it was an innocent question, but in her voice I could hear the accusation: Not only does your daughter hate me, but now you hate my finger sandwiches!

I had to say something, but I was out of compliments. I’d cleaned out my list. What to do? Think, Bobski, think. “Gawsh, you look purdy today, Miss Teacher.” Wait, was that me or Li’l Abner?

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

Maybe that hadn’t come out the right way. “What do you mean?”

“You think you can throw any old compliment my way, and I’ll just nod my head and smile.”

My mouth opened so wide she could have filled it with a stack of those lethal triangles.

“I’m on to you, you and your wife.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you know exactly what I mean, tossing compliments around harum-scarum.”

“I prefer willy-nilly.”

“Your complimenting days are over, Mister.”

The room span in tornado circles. I couldn’t breathe. This required the ultimate sacrifice. I grabbed a finger sandwich and shoved it in my mouth. “Delicious,” I said, swallowing it whole, praying the mayo wouldn’t scar my esophagus.

An Uncomfortable Ride Home

After an hour spent gargling with cupcakes, the taste of mayonnaise had dwindled. Miraculously, I had survived with only minor damage to my taste buds.

It was an uncomfortable ride home until my wife broke the silence.  “You really botched that,” said Lana. “All you had to do was say something nice about the performance.”

“I knew we wouldn’t get away with it, baby.”

“How hard is it to say, ‘You did a great job with the kids’, or… whatever.”

“She was on to me, baby. She could see through our plan like chips on a cookie.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Like fudge in a brownie.”

“Even worse.”

“Like icing on a cake.”

“And did you have to make such a big deal about eating one of her sandwiches? Falling to your knees and crying like that?”

“I wasn’t gonna’ let them take me alive, baby.”

She sighed. The Compliment Plot had failed, but it was over now. We may have dug ourselves an even deeper hole, but at least we weren’t going to use false compliments to dig ourselves out.

We turned into our driveway. “I know what we should do,” said my wife as we came to a stop. “We ought to buy her a present.”

The Present Plot

An ominous pall filled the air, like mayo on a finger sandwich. The Compliment Plot wasn’t bad enough; now, she wanted me in on a Present Plot. I could feel the squeeze, like pineapples in an upside-down cake. What choice did I have? What would you do?