a lastborn moment

Yesterday, I had a lot of house prep tasks on my list. The boys had already spent Good Friday hooked up to their respective electronic devices and I decided it was time to put them to work.
I called them to my bedroom where I explained that if they wanted to be able to buy a big house in Ohio, we would need to do lots to clean up this house so that people would want to spend lots of money on it. This lit up Firstborn's face as predicted. Lastborn was not quite so interested.

I listed off the tasks that they could do for me. Clean their room, put away the folded laundry. Vacuum the stairs, clean out my car... To each Firstborn offered to help. He's earning money for a skateboard and a game device, so he is incented. Lastborn sat quietly until the last job, packaging up the bottles and cans for return, was listed. Silence from both boys. I asked Firstborn again thinking I could divvy up the jobs Firstborn had claimed to make it more even. But he complained that working the bottles and cans made his back hurt.

So, I looked to Lastborn who gave me that, "you're not going to put me to work are you?" look.

Looks like you have bottles and cans then.

He acquiesced and we proceeded to the garage to give the instruction. This is Lastborn's first time on bottle duty. I showed him the trash can where we store the rinsed bottles and cans and I gave him a couple of trash bags and boxes to fill the bottles and cans so we can transport them to the grocery store. He happily began his task and I moved on to a painting job.

A while later I came across him washing his hands. I noticed that the knees on his pants were grimy.

"how did your knees get so dirty," I asked.
"It's a long story," he replied head bowed.

Note to Lastborn: If you want to avoid explaining an incident to your mother, the phrase "It's a long story is not the way to do it. Mom loves long stories.

"come on, tell me. I'd love to hear it."
"No!"

The more he protests, the more I think, this has to be a good one.

Firstborn gets in on the action.

"Tell me!" he says.
Still Lastborn remains mum.

I leave the room and hear the two of them talking in conspiratorial tones. I wait for the talking to subside and return to the room. Now Firstborn looks really guilty. He says, "I know the story now, but I'm not telling. And it wasn't very long."

I smile, "I knew that. But what happened."
With a mixture of amazement and disgust, Firstborn relays that Lastborn, having emptied the trash barrel as far as his almost 7 year old arms could reach, then tipped the can over and crawled in to get the last ones out. Even a barrel full of rinsed bottles and cans can have some residual soda in it. So the knees were covered with soda and dirt.

Lastborn then announced that this was a very dirty job and he should be on the TV show, Dirty Jobs.

Maybe next time, I will show him how to tip the cans out of the trash bin instead of crawling in. But you can imagine after him seeing the TV show Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe crawling into all sorts of dirty confined spaces, that this must be what I had in mind.

Add this to the list of possible future careers for Lastborn. At least it's better than starring role in Puppetry of the Penis.