Like father like son.

I'm four years old or so and having a serious conversation with my parents. Dad is visibly upset. The subject matter seems eerily familiar.

Mom asks, "Where do we draw?"

I'm dumbfounded. "Wow, if she doesn't know the answer, my future is in serious jeopardy."

Thankfully, she answers her own question, "On paper."

I nod in agreement. "Oh yeah.. paper," I think to myself.

We had had this conversation before, but ususally it occurred in front of a wall. Naturally, I was a bit confused. I mean, technically I hadn't been drawing. I was carving. Tic Tac Toe in my dad's dresser. And despite my best efforts, all the games ended in a tie.

I was too young to be punished. But I remember feeling bad. Or maybe it was that the whole ordeal was told over and over to everyone. Grandmas, aunts and uncles all heard what I had done. I heard mom tell every detail over the phone.

Years later, had to be somewhere in my early teens, I had committed another offense of some sort. This time dad was there to discipline. To be honest, I forget what I actually did, but I remember his words vividly. Probably because he was laughing.

He had tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. Totally not the typical reaction to an obvious infraction.

"One day, you'll have kids" he said, "and they will put you through so much more than you're putting me through right now."

A few decades later, those words would ring all too true.

It's Halloween night. As usual, we're hosting a small gathering. My wife has to work late so dinner, the kids and all the decorations are my responsibility. My first born is old enough to carve his first pumpkin. We draw a simple design on the gourd of his choice. To keep the markers away from the baby, I tuck the markers in my back pocket.

There's a lot to do, so for dinner, I decide to have pizza from a take 'n bake. My youngest, discouraged that he can't carve his own jacko-lantern wanders into the living room and throws a fit. My oldest is progressing nicely with his carving and then we hear a loud crash.

The baby had managed to pull the stereo off the shelf. I don't know how he did it but thanfully, he managed to not get hurt. While I'm putting the stereo back on the shelf, the oven timer goes off. I've got stereo parts in each hand and dinner is about to burn to a crisp. I get the stereo back on the shelf, rush to the oven, pull the pie out and cut it immediately.

That's when I realize the quiet. It's the loudest quiet I've ever heard. You have to be a parent to understand this quiet. It's an ominous quiet. Like you're in dream. Or like in movies where there's some heavy handed foreshadowing.

I walk out to the living room and there's my baby, next to my wife's favorite chair. Seems innocent enough, then it hits me like a meteor. He is drawing on my wife's favorite chair!

In the time it took me to remove a pizza from the oven and cut it, he had managed to tag every visible surface of the chair. But where'd he get a permanent marker? We're normally so careful about keeping them locked up... I reach into my back pocket and realize I had been pick pocketed by an 18 month old! It must have happened while I was putting the stereo back together.

I should be mad, but I'm not. I'm laughing the deepest, belly laugh -the kind of laugh that brings a smile across your face, warms your heart and makes you cry.

That day, dad's words rang too true not to laugh.

We still have the chair prominently displayed in our living room. And my youngest points at his contributions to the chair now and again, smiling proudly. I smile right back at him all the while knowing one day, when he has kids of his own, Karma will likely have him in histarics.