This week it's a case of sticky fingers all round, and I am not just talking about the honey
There was once a trespasser called Goldilocks, who made the lives of ordinary bears utter hell by breaking and entering into their homes for no other reason other than, as a privileged young person and daughter of bankers, she was bored with her middle-class comfort and wanted to live life on the edge.
The burglary itself was violating enough, but what made this series of trespasses even worse was Goldliocks’ habit of sleeping in the bears’ beds — though, to be fair, this is a crime I have been guilty of at house parties back in the noughties.
I don’t know if you recall the song 'You’ll always find me in the kitchen at parties', but for me it was more a case of 'you’ll always find me in the master bedroom at parties'. Yes, I was quite fond of arranging myself under a stranger’s duvet and switching on an electric blanket with all the carefreeness of somebody not paying the utilities.
To add insult to injury, Goldilocks was also known to sample the bears’ porridge, noting that Mammy Bear’s porridge was ‘too cold’ for her taste, a fact which will come as no surprise to fellow mothers of three-year-olds who look forward to a hot cup of tea sometime in 2038.
We often refer to ourselves as bears in this house, and have somehow coined the wonderfully original monikers Baby Bear, Ted Bear, Daddy Bear, and Mammy Bear for ourselves.
This week got off to a tricky start as Mammy Bear found her cushions covered in honey, with all signs pointing to Ted Bear as the culprit.
Deciding to confront the three-year-old suspect head-on, I watch out of the corner of my eye as four-month-old Baby Bear swivels in his chair like a Bond villain waiting for the carnage to unfold.
When asked about the incident, Ted insists that it was not, in fact, him who opened the jar of honey but rather a grizzly bear who broke into the house earlier in the day.
I push for a more specific description (to differentiate between this bear and other bears roaming around West Kerry), and our three-year-old throws his hands up in exasperation. Such a move is strangely reminiscent of old episodes where the detectives spend most of their time finding extremely reluctant witnesses. These witnesses are invariably nannies not impressed with being accosted by the police in Central Park, and much like these nannies, Ted does not want to engage with me when I ask for details he sees as superfluous to enquiries.
"Daddy ate all the honey because Daddy is a bear,” he persists, though Daddy pleads innocence.
I have no choice but to rule in his favour in the face of questionable statements and the fact Ted’s face is covered in honey.
I was the only one on bedtime duty that night, as Daddy Bear was working.
“Mammy, I love looking at your face,” Ted says, touching my cheek with his tiny fingertips.
It is a moment so full of love that it nearly robs me of my ability to be sarcastic, but then something heavy falls onto my slipper. It is a half-eaten glass jar of honey, which Ted has somehow snuck into bed and hidden under his pillow.
Ted feigns shock. “Daddy put honey under my pillow,” he exclaims.
“What else do you have under there?” I ask as I rummage under the pillow and find an unfamiliar wooden dinosaur.
Ted proceeds to tell me the teacher gave him the dinosaur because he was such a good boy, but under no uncertain terms am I to thank her for this gift or mention how this dinosaur came into our possession. He then mumbles about the guards, hinting heavily at potential legal repercussions.
It didn’t take a detective to deduce that Ted Bear had stolen this dinosaur, and we were dealing with a case of seriously sticky fingers (and not just down to the honey).
Our career criminal fell asleep and I vowed to return the stolen dinosaur first thing. Of course, I still haven’t returned the dinosaur four days later, but I fully intend to, much like I fully intend to reimburse the pharmacy chain I stole eyeliner from back in the early noughties.
Lifting dinosaurs from schools and eyeliner from big pharma may seem like a victimless crime, but don’t be deceived because every aspiring sticky-fingers person has to start somewhere.
I should know, given that the seeds of my teenage kleptomania were sown in an incident which occurred when, as a buggy-bound toddler, I took a shine to a toy but my mother pooh-poohed the notion that I needed another plastic hairdressing set.
Not to be defeated, I proceeded to stuff the hairdressing set under my twin brother, conveniently occupying one side of the double buggy whose bum provided the perfect cover.
Arriving home and discovering the stolen goods, my mother marked my card as a potential fraudster and marched me down to the toyshop to pay for what was now very much a squashed styling set.
She had to pay for the toy herself because kids don’t have money, so I kind of got away with it when you think about it, just like my three-year-old sticky fingers who will undoubtedly emerge from Dinosaur Gate unscathed. We are all graduates of the School of Second Chances, and because of that, we continue to try to make amends for the mistakes of our past. That is why I pay for my eyeliner now and never turn on strangers’ electric blankets uninvited, because as Queen Alanis Morrisette once sang, 'You live, you learn'.