Something in the water...or in the cardboard, I'm not sure

Here at Northview, before our milk goes into the bulk tank, it runs through an inline fibrous filter that takes out any bits of straw or debris that may have been pulled in with the milk. These filters are 24 inches long and 2 1/4 inches wide and come in a green cardboard box, which holds somewhere around fifty of them. Said boxes are rife with potential, simply rife. They are nothing but trouble.

Last night, while setting up for milking, I found I could not get my fingers on a filter (the green box is stored inside a white metal box on the wall, (into which it just nicely fits), for purposes of cleanliness and keeping the milk inspector happy). Liz tried to reach one too and couldn't, so she pulled the green box out of the other box. Yep, just one left. We were all set just the same, since the boss had bought a brand new green box of filters, which was sitting on the windowsill. She plugged into the metal box. Then she set the empty green box over by the door to be taken to the stove, and warned me, "Don't let Alan see this, you know what will happen."

Well, yes, I did know what would happen...it has happened before, it will likely happen again, but in the business of getting started I forgot all about it and left the box right there. Sure enough, when it came time to tear down he spotted it. Immediately he popped the end over the top of his head and became, "Napole-ON" (as he pronounces it in a hokey French accent).
Why he thinks a two-foot long filter box on top of his head turns him into a famous, (but short), French dictator, I don't know, but last night he discovered a new phenomenon. When you hit six feet tall and you put a two-foot long box on top of your head, you can't stand up in the milkhouse.

Instead Napole-ON had to scurry around bent almost double. That didn't slow him down though. (Dang it!) He began to cavort with the box (taking up a lot of room like only a teenaged boy on a tear can do. They seem to expand to fill all available surface area and then some). Because of these windage and elevation difficulties he took the box off his head and became Bionic Man. With his bionic cardboard arm for swatting family members and making foolish he was invincible (and not so very helpful either). There is just no dealing with him when he gets his hands, (or head) or whatever, into a cardboard filter box. They make him crazy.

As a responsible parent I needed to do something, anything....to stop the insanity. I tried to rip the box off. (If you take the box away he calms down and will get back to feeding the last hay feeding of the day and taking hay over to the horses.)

I couldn't get it though. I just couldn't. Because of the empowering properties of the box, my advanced (and ever increasing) age and infirmity (not to mention the fact I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt), all I could tear away were little 2-inch chunks of green cardboard.

"Hee-Yah," he waved it tauntingly at me and ran out the door. Of course I followed and we did box battle beside the bucket rack outside the door. More pieces fell to my onslaught, but I still couldn't win the day...(mostly because I wound up lying over the bucket rack guffawing helplessly, with tears streaming down my face).

It is hard when you are laughing yourself sick to get someone to stop waving a box around and finish up feeding, but eventually that happened. Maybe he just got tired. Maybe whatever properties green cardboard filter boxes possess finally wore off. I don't know.

I swear though, the next time we empty out a box of filters I am going to take it right over to the stove and toss it in. Never again will I risk leaving it lying around waiting to transform my mild mannered son into Napole-ON. Never.