Running of the bulls

How come you're still in one piece?

My daughter is jumping up and down in the living room, why; I have no idea, is there something she’s happy about? It makes everything shake, some photo frames bounce precariously close to the edge of the mantle, so I tell her to stop.
I’m very clear about it, too: “Please stop jumping,” I say. Three easy words, that could not possibly be interpreted any other way. Right? Yes, you are scoffing at that; I can sense it.

So what she does next is jump, this time while trying to lift a wing chair with her. An enormous crash, at the exact moment I turn back to my work, and there it is.
“What did I just tell you?” I say, and the answer is the same as always when any physical mishap is concerned: “It was an accident.”

Right. My daughter is like a bull in the proverbial china shop. In fact, she is like an army of bulls. If this was Pamplona, I would be dead, trampled, fodder for the headlines; she has absolutely no sense of personal space and it gets her in trouble on a regular basis. Furniture moves of its own accord when she enters the room, small animals hide, earth quakes appear out of nowhere, baffling the weather men who have no idea that the source is a seven-year-old girl who doesn’t listen to her mother.