We’ve all experienced asking our kids a question about “who did it” and received the response, “not me!” haven’t we? Bil Keane of Family Circus created the ghost Not Me that runs around causing all of the havoc in the house that the kids seem to know nothing about. We tease about this Not Me character in our house quite frequently. It’s amazing when you’ve got six kids to blame it on, but apparently not one of them did it.
Today my wife was reading to the kids out of Genesis as part of our Advent reading. In this reading I discovered that maybe this practice didn’t originate in our house, or even in the home represented in Family Circus. In Genesis 3 as God confronts Adam about how they realized they were naked he more or less responds “not me!” it was Eve, and she responds “not me!” it was the snake.
So see, maybe our kids came by this practice honestly. It couldn’t have come from me though because I never blamed anything on somebody else when I was a kid…