The Great Tootsie Roll Caper

A week ago Friday night, I walked in the front door after a long, difficult week at work and was met by J.P. as soon as I stepped inside.  His eyes were red and he was sniffling.  He started crying when he could see I was a little irritated with him and Jude told him to go upstairs to his room to collect himself.

I changed clothes and walked upstairs to J.P.'s bedroom to see why he was so upset.  When I walked in, he started sniffling again, gulping breaths and said, "I'm sorry, Daddy, I did something sneaky."

"What did you do, J.P.?" I said.

Crying harder, now, he said, "I've been sneaking Tootsie Rolls."

I burst out laughing, initially, then replied, "what do you mean?"

What I learned in the ensuing conversation was that for the past couple of weeks, J.P. had been waiting until Joe was outside with Jude, Carley or me, then he would come back inside and go into the pantry.  On the bottom shelf, there was an old bag of Halloween candy that had Tootsie Rolls in it.  J.P. would ease the door almost closed, so the light wouldn't go off, and grab a Tootsie Roll or two and eat them in the pantry.

Intrigued, I asked him where he hid the wrappers.  "In the trash," he said.  "Did you bury the wrappers under the trash?"  I asked.  "Sometimes," he said.  Apparently, he didn't bury the wrappers deeply enough because Jude found a couple of them earlier in the evening and asked who had been eating Tootsie Rolls.  J.P. immediately confessed, then got upset because he thought I might not let him go to a friend's birthday sleepover the next night.

I told him I didn't think he needed to miss the sleepover.  We agreed an appropriate punishment would be to not eat sweets for two weeks, since he had been sneaking Tootsie Rolls for two weeks.

Let the punishment meet the crime.