My wonderful niece Gioia is coming to town this weekend with her mom. We're planning to flail around on cross country skis for a while, eat sushi for dinner, and at some point Gioia will give me this look, this arched-eyebrowed, slightly challenging look that everyone says she learned from me, and say, "When are we going to get into some mischief?"

This is totally my own fault. Gioia is almost 9, and ever since she was 5 I've been doing my best to subvert the essential goodness and propriety taught her by her parents. They're not straight-laced or strict or anything, unless you think a Waldorf education is strict. They're just good — naturally good — and I, for all my wonderful qualities, am not really all that good. I've been working for the last 20 years on throwing goodness out the window and trying to be myself instead, concentrating hard on irreverence and humor.

The first thing I taught Gioia to do was put canned goods inside all her father's shoes. She'd sneak into the guest bed with me early in the morning and we'd wait for him to get dressed and let out a loud squawk when his foot found the cold round surface of a can of refried beans. After that she graduated to exchanging her parents' dresser drawers — her mother's lingerie we'd move down to where the sweaters lived, put the sweaters where the pants had been, and stuff the jeans and cords into the lingerie drawer. You'd be surprised at how much pleasure this brings a child. And, of course, a lot of the fun is waiting to be found out. Luckily her parents played the game well, squealing and hollering in mock outrage, and weren't too irritated with me. I think they secretly appreciated a short vacation from goodness themselves.

When you don't have your own children, you aren't accustomed to having to deal with the consequences of what you've started, since you — I should say I — sweep in, cause a bunch of trouble, and then go home to sit peacefully in front of the fire and read a book. Meanwhile Gioia has to be calmed down from the heights of her glee so she can be put to bed, and a lot of clothing and canned food needs to be relocated.

It turns out, however, that I may have painted myself into a corner. As Gioia's getting older, her ideas of mischief are getting more inventive. She's picked up some of that irreverence and rebellion I wanted her to learn. And although her innate good nature is very strong and she would never want to hurt anyone, I worry that she'll think of something potentially really irritating, like hiding car keys in the freezer or painting somebody's windshield with peanut butter. Then everyone will blame me, and rightly so.

My brother is of course delighted that I have to suffer too, watching me think fast on my feet to keep one step ahead of his smart daughter. Wait till I teach her to short-sheet his bed.