JESSE MURPHY: Et tu, Brute?

Everyone has to be held accountable for their actions, and I am no exception.

On a happy-go-lucky, supposedly carefree Saturday morning last week, the five-year-old foiled my well-laid plans to slack off for the day.

Here's the set up. The wife had been bugging me to do some cleaning in the basement, and though it was needed, I had been putting it off (surprise!).

And this is where my doomed Saturday took a turn for the worse.

I had spent a few weeks dodging the "are you done with the basement yet" question, and I'll admit, fibbed a little about the progress on the project.

Getting away with that minuscule fib would be easy, as the wife rarely ventures into the dank, dark dungeon that boasts a plethora of creepy-crawlies.

(Side note -- I'm not an entomologist, but I believe we may have a few species of spiders that exist only in our basement, along with some weird centipede-looking things that are so ugly they have to be poisonous).

So, she doesn't go down there, and I figured that would give me extra time to complete the task.

Then Saturday morning happened.

The boy was going to go play outside, roll in the power wheel, dig for worms, general boy stuff. I was going to grab a cold one and watch some baseball, maybe casually do a few chores.

His directive was to clean up toys before his outdoor adventure.

That's when he sold me out -- threw me under the bus -- however you want to put it, he ratted me out.

When I took the wife's side on cleaning up toys before he went out, he said…

"But you told dad to clean the basement forever ago, and he still hasn't done it."

Great. I gave him the death stare.

Well played little man, well played. He had a few short minutes of clean-up, while my whole afternoon was shot.

I suppose Lady Justice's scales tipped against me with good reason.

As a self-proclaimed procrastinator, I fully know the possible consequences of throwing duties on the back burner.

A flash back of times spent doing chores while my friends headed to the pool ended with a snap back into 2012. Same story, different excuses.

Who would of thought my downfall would be my own flesh and blood?

Honesty, sometimes brutal, is inherent among children, but only when it comes to certain things.

They are quick to call out hypocrisies about bed time, but when it comes to "who made the mess," all you get is blank stares.

I guess I couldn't be mad about it, but it taught an important lesson.

Children can't be trusted. Combine their unknown motives and unabashed commentary, you have a recipe for disaster with their devil-may-care attitudes.

We have a generation of brazen tattlers on our hands.

If there is a trick to this, please advise… But for now, I'm going to form a plan to combat this nuisance, and since most of them can't read yet, I'll inform the general public in print form when (if) I come up with something. Hopefully before it's too late and we all have to spend weekends cleaning our basements and garages.

Jesse Murphy is a reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum. He can be reached at jmurphy@maryvilledailyforum.com or found plotting his revenge.