Finding the messiest and most inconvenient ways to mortify their parents is one of the things kids excel most at.

You all remember that one kid who took everything way too literally? One guy shared a hilarious bit on Reddit recently exemplifying exactly that.

Here’s the story.

Making a splash with his compliance.

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 farmhouse, and he and his sisters were often shooed outside to play, especially when their mom was busy with chores such as making dinner.

Sounds pretty idyllic.

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.

That tends to have the opposite effect with kids.

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.

It’s funny when kids are so literal.

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, Johnny! Come in and wash up for dinner!

Johnny was too locked in.

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!

This can only lead to one outcome…

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.

That had to be a visceral memory for him. Let’s see if Reddit felt as warmly about it as he did.

Some delightfully shared similar stories.

Others adored the little protagonist of the story.

One person reminisced fondly.

And another reveled in the humanity of the story.

Mischievous compliance over malicious compliance is always the key.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.