One day as everyone was at Khanom Joon’s house in the living room and Ardi and I were sitting in the family room, a cockroach darted across the floor. We quickly cornered it and placed an empty matchbox on top of it. We then slid the matchbox’s exterior sleeve around it thus trapping the cockroach inside. We then began thinking of ways to wreck havoc with the cockroach. Although we had no specific plan in mind we both agreed that we should somehow involve Nina as the target.

“Let’s just call her in here and ask her to open the matchbox,” Ardi suggested.

“No that’s too obvious. She’s gonna know that something is up.”

We scattered some matches around the matchbox. We figured that eventually everyone would come to this room and seeing the matches and matchbox on the coffee table, someone, hopefully Nina, would attempt to put them back in the box and thus release the cockroach. Scrutinizing the plan we found a number of flaws in it. For starters there was no guarantee that Nina would be amongst the ones settling in the family room. Even if she did it was quite possible that someone else would gather the matches and put them back in the matchbox. Most importantly given how we were the youngest of the adult crowd and already in the family room (and thus the obvious culprits for making the mess), chances were that even if others came in the room, we would be the ones to be asked to put the matches back. We figured we could eliminate the biggest obstacle by moving to the kitchen and keeping an eye on the family room coffee table. After spending some time in the kitchen with no results we finally gave up and headed upstairs. 

Some time later while we were in Ardi’s room listening to music, a bloodcurdling scream from downstairs startled us both. After getting beyond the initial jolt, we instantly realized that in spite of our absence our plan had succeeded. While we celebrated the outcome with a congratulatory high five, however, for the next few weeks we maintained a safe distance away from Nina.