When You Turn Into Your Parents

 When You Turn Into Your Parents

By Stu Cassell | Highlands Today 

Published: March 02, 2011

Do you remember that fateful day when you looked in the mirror and suddenly realized you had turned into your mother or father? I'm not talking about wearing your pants up to your chest, or spraying your hair until you have a perfectly styled brick hair helmet. No, I mean the first moment when one of these time honored clichés spilled merrily off your tongue:

"How many times have I told you not to do that?"

As a kid, when I heard this I always wondered, "Is this a lecture or a math quiz?"

"You could put someone's eye out with that."

By my count there were approximately 3,458,976 different ways you could remove an eye using common household articles, according to my mother's proclamations. I can just imagine my mother saying that to my father on their honeymoon: "Put that away Alex, you could put an eye out with it."

"Don't make me start counting."

This was great - like counting to 3 was in and of itself punishment enough to keep any would-be felon from committing a crime. Why don't the police use this tactic?

"All right, you in there with the hostages - release them immediately. Don't make us start counting!"

When all else failed there was always: "Because I said so, that's why"

You know, if God had taken this approach to justifying a social mandate, the Bible would have been just one page long.

Sometimes a good parental cliché passed down from generation to generation just isn't enough to deal with the rigors of child-rearing. I found a well-placed threat, creatively crafted, does wonders. That's why I came up with the Multi-Generational Threat.

"If you don't do what I say right now, not only will you never play another video game in your life, but in addition, when you grow up and have kids of your own, I'll see to it that they never do either."

Now the kid is responsible for not only himself, but future generations.

There are times in the heat of battle when your emotions get the best of you. Once I was lecturing my sons about arguing with one another and it began like this:

"You two are about an inch away from me taking TV away from you for the rest of the night. If I hear you calling each other names one more time that's it! If you so much as make a face at one another, I'll send you to your rooms. I don't need this stress - I have enough to worry about without having to be your referee."

As I got further into the lecture I became more worked up until finally I yelled at them,

"That's it! I'm not putting up with this any longer. GO TO YOUR ROOMS!"

Dad had lost it - no doubt about it. The boys were wise enough to go to their rooms without questioning it to give me a few minutes to calm down. Later, when I was rational again, they mentioned, "Dad, when you started to talk to us you said we were an inch away from losing TV. Then you got yourself so worked up, you sent us to our rooms and we hadn't even done anything else."

They were right, but I couldn't just admit I had lost it, so instead I countered with: "I re-measured and discovered you were much less than an inch away from losing your privileges. In fact, when I did the recalculating I discovered you had actually lost them!"

The boys failed to see the humor in my lame excuse for losing my temper. Oh well, there's always, "Because I said so, that's why!"