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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/CostumingMom on 2025-07-04 14:46:31+00:00.
Obligatory not my story, but my fathers.
My father told me this tale of his childhood. He was a young child at the time, so this would have happened sometime in the early 1940s.
He grew up in a farm house, and he and his sisters were often shooed outside to play, especially when their mom was busy with chores such as making dinner. However, the previous few days it had been raining, so she hadn't gotten those breaks and tempers were flaring a bit.
The rain finally let up and she sent them all outside, but there still was an immense puddle almost directly in front of the front door. Therefore, she admonished them to stay out of it.
Well, my father really wanted to play in that puddle, but he was old enough to have made the connection with what happens when you don't obey mom, so he did what he was told and stayed away from the puddle.
Now I don't know if he'd already figured out his mother's preferred phrases, or it was happy coincidence, but he was planning on the following from the beginning, (or so he told me).
As the afternoon wore on, he played here, then there, and as he became aware that it was getting close to dinner time, he made sure he was on the opposite side of that puddle from the door.
Dinner time came, and mom called the kids in. His sisters went in fairly promptly, avoiding the puddle as requested. He, however continued to play on the other side, ignoring the call.
When she realized he was still playing, she called again, (obligatory not real name), Johnny! Come in and wash up for dinner!
Nope. No response, just happily playing away.
Then she said it, and boy was he ready.
John Michael Smith, you come straight here! Right now!
And so he did. He ran straight to her, right through that immense puddle that had been calling to him all afternoon.
Fallout was a through scrubbing of a bath and a cold late dinner, but he still remembers today the joy of that splashing run.