Toy Story Meets The Geneva Convention

My sister is visiting us from a three-hour drive away. I see her pull up on our driveway and get out of the car along with her husband and two kids. They look tired.

Me: “Wow, rough trip?”

Sister: “The kids were being noisy, so we tried the whole “whoever can stay quiet the longest gets five bucks” game.”

Me: “Oh, yeah, like we used to do with ours when they were small. Did… it not work?”

Sister: “So instead of being quiet, they tried to sabotage the other by pinching and biting, getting one of them to make a noise first.”

Me: “Why didn’t you just make the rule that they’re not allowed to hurt their sibling to make a noise?”

Sister: “Of course I tried that! But then they took each other’s toys prisoner and made up some weird, twisted game where they tried to force the other to make a noise first by gradually damaging each other’s toys.”

Me: “That’s… creative. And a bit disturbing. Why didn’t you just add the rule that they weren’t allowed to… uh… torture their toys, I guess?”

Sister: “How many rules did you think I tried to add that they didn’t circumvent in some crazy way!? I gave up and was about to accept the noise, but [Husband] was able to shut them up in the end.”

Me: “Oh, what worked?”

Sister: “[Husband] said he’d change the home WiFi password if they “didn’t ‘shut the f*** up” and that seemed to work in seconds. Sometimes the simpler methods are best…”

Their kids were surprisingly quiet all day…