Little Crimes For Little Tots

Visitors to my Goodreads page may have noticed my recent infatuation with Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith, whose many works include "Strangers on a Train," which became a great Alfred Hitchcock movie, is widely considered to be the best writer of crime fiction ever. Somehow, despite being extraordinarily popular in Europe, she was under-appreciated in her native United States until the movie version of her "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was released in this country in 1999. Although her genre was crime fiction, she has been lauded by many writers and critics as a major player in mainstream literature, much like her own favorite authors, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus and Proust.
According to one of her biographers, Joan Shenkar, Ms. Highsmith was fond of making lists, some of them quite macabre. Below is one such list of helpful activities which small children can do around the house. The list was jotted down in her writer's notebook on November 16, 1973 in Moncourt, France:

Little Crimes for Little Tots. Things around the house — which small children can do, such as:

1) Tying string across top of stairs so adults will trip.
2) Replacing roller skate on stairs, once mother has removed it.
3) Setting careful fires, so that someone else will get the blame if possible.
4) Rearranging pills in medicine cabinets; sleeping pills into aspirin bottle. Pink laxative pills into antibiotic bottle which is kept in fridge.
5) Rat powder or flea powder into flour jar in kitchen.
6) Saw through supports of attic trap door, so that anyone walking on closed trap will fall through to stairs.
7) In summer: fix magnifying glass to focus on dry leaves, or preferably oily rags somewhere. Fire may be attributed to spontaneous combustion.
8) Investigate anti-mildew products in gardening shed. Colorless poison added to gin bottle.