living with a six-year-old con artist

Quinn is an enterprising young man.  Not long ago he discovered the principle of compartmentalization of ignorance:

Quinn: "Dad, can I have a cookie?"
Dad: "No."
[goes down to the other end of the house]
Quinn: "Mom, can I have a cookie?"
Mom: "Sure."
[comes back down to me]
Quinn: "Mom said I could have a cookie!"

From there it wasn't a long step to this:

Quinn: "Mom, can I have a cookie?"
Mom: "Yes, if your dad says it's okay."
[goes down to the other end of the house]
Quinn: "Mom said I could have a cookie!"

And then, of course, to:

Quinn: "Mom, can I have a cookie?"
Mom: "No."
[goes down to the other end of the house]
Quinn: "Mom said I could have a cookie!"

Discoveries like these lead to conversations like the following, which took place in the kitchen this morning between keyne, my mother, and me:

"What we need is some kind of alert system.  Like Amber Alerts.  With lights in different parts of the house so we can signal each other."

"I really think it would be sufficient if we each just carried around tokens with our names on them."

"Like, yellow means he's trying to get cheese, green means orange juice, that sort of thing?"

"Not even!  Just: 'Oh, Dad said you could play a video game now?  Okay, show me the "Dad" token he gave you!'"

"That sounds like it would work great right up until he finds ---"

"--- until he finds the stash of tokens.  Right."

"He'd carry them around in his pockets like he was smuggling dirt out of the tunnels in The Great Escape."

"Should we write notes to each other instead?  'I, Nancy Pierce, hereby declare on this the 24th day of January...'"

"Fastest way to teach him to forge handwriting."

...

He didn't get the cookie. Not today, at any rate.