My Daughter and The Devil

Before my daughter, Maggie, was a year old Satan came to my house and recruited her. I say “recruited” as if it were for an important position but I get the impression Hell has a lot of rungs in its hierarchical ladder and Satan takes a personal interest in his employees on every level. Not to say she’s not capable of moving up but she’s not even two and has to prove herself - so for now I think she is working at the level of minion. My wife, in typical mother fashion, is naïve enough to think her kid is the only one not in league with the Great Satan. I have tried to tell my wife that our daughter works for Satan but she won’t hear it. "How can someone so cute possibly work for Satan?" she asks while twirling one of Maggie’s pigtails with her index finger. Never mind the fact that right after she asks this absurd question Maggie deliberately dumps the very glass of juice that she begged for on the floor and then has the nerve to say “uh-oh” as if someone walked up and knocked it out of her hands.

The actual employment started a little less than a year ago…
One night while lying in bed thinking about nothing in particular I heard a noise coming from Maggie’s room. I got up with the intention of discovering the cause of said noise, but when I got to Maggie’s closed door something stopped me before I opened it. There was a vaporous red light emanating from the crack beneath her door. Now, from my extensive film experience (watching not producing) I knew this meant one of two things. Either she was in there basking in the red glow of a lava lamp while sharing tokes on a bong with her pals, OR Satan was in there recruiting her for his work.

Irritated by both possible scenarios, I burst into the room to find no bong, no pals, but Satan, standing there smiling at my daughter. The most troubling thing, besides the fact that Lucifer himself was in my house, was that Maggie too was standing. I noticed that Satan had a document that he rolled as he laughed in my face and at that moment I realized what had happened. Maggie had sold her soul for the gift of mobility. (Just so you understand, the curse wasn’t that she could walk but that she could walk before she could reason.) As I screamed revenge I leaped for the throat of Satan but narrowly missed as he dropped into a fiery hole, which I can only assume led to Hell because we don’t have a basement. As I cursed Lucifer’s name salty sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes and woke me. It had all been a dream. My heart was still racing when I wiped the sweat from my eyes and sighed relief. "Thanks to all that is holy, Maggie is still a crawler." The moments that followed were filled with thoughts of the flawed development of the human body and mind. Why does nature or God allow us to develop basic motor skills before we can understand simple instruction or expressions like “no” or “stop unrolling every inch of toilet paper we own or we’ll adopt you to a family someplace like West Virginia where they still use outhouses and wipe their butts with squirrels, you don’t even wipe your own butt anyway, what do you need fifty feet of toilet paper for?” As I tiredly considered this enigma I attempted to readjust my position and go back to sleep by turning on my side and putting a pillow between my knees like a pregnant woman when I heard a bump. This time the noise was real. Paternal instinct took over and my feet hit the carpet and were already moving to investigate before I had the chance to think what I was doing. Like in my dream my search led to Maggie’s door and without pausing I opened it and stepped in. Just then surreal slapped my face and brought me fully awake. Maggie was standing in the middle of the room. I looked at her but couldn’t move or speak. She returned the empty stare in kind. The motionless deadpan staring contest continued for an unnatural length. The silence was only finally broken by the tiniest splash. It was a drop of ink hitting the floor. That’s when my eyes shifted and I noticed the feather quill in her right hand. My heart sank when I realized I was too late. The deal was done. Satan had already come and gone and I wasn’t there to stop him. My paralysis finally gave way and I slowly walked over and picked up the books Maggie had just pushed to the floor. I then moved to her and took the quill from her hand that, of course, disappeared in a poof of smoke. Again I looked down at her and her at me, but this time a smile broke across her face, and my heart went from sinking to melting. Sure she was now working for the Dark Lord, but she was still my daughter. I gathered her up in my arms, kissed her forehead, and set her back in her bed with the admonition to stay there till morning, which no doubt fell on deaf ears, and then returned to bed myself.
It has been nearly a year since the incident and not many nights have passed that she hasn’t ended up in mine and my wife’s bed in the middle of the night, and there isn’t anything in our house less than three feet from the ground that hasn’t been pulled to the floor or covered in whatever she was supposed to be eating, but that is the way of things. I understand that we, the parents, are the ones to blame; always encouraging them as they move from one stage to the next – rolling, crawling, walking – cheering them on along the way. However I should say that as she has learned we too have learned some lessons and we won’t be making the same mistake again. Our month old son will stay strapped on his back till he can communicate and understand, and we’ll not be dissuade by tears, screaming, or bedsores.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Satan.