You're Welcome

“This is not all the laundry!” My normally sweet and polite little girl put her hand on her hip and glared at me for a moment before turning on her heel and huffing down the hall, absolutely indignant that she couldn’t find the jeans she was looking for.

As I watched her stomp away, several thoughts occurred to me in rapid succession:

1.     Are you fucking kidding me right now? I did all this child’s laundry and now she's complaining about it?

2.     Did she really just put her hand on her hip and glare at me?

3.      Hold on. Is there laundry in the dryer?

4.     I could let that go. I don't want to fight with her and I'd love to have enough time for oatmeal. Letting that go would be easier. 

5.     If I ignore this crap behavior now I might someday let loose on the world quite a little asshole.

6.      And then, “Are you fucking kidding me?” again.

It had started innocently enough. "Mom, is there laundry in the dryer?” It was a reasonable question. Laundry in this house does not always travel from the dryer to neatly-folded-in-drawers in a timely manner.

But on this particular day, I had seen the task of laundry through to the end (or at least very near the end) and all the clothes were folded in stacks on my bed ready to be put away. So I said, “Nope. It’s all there on the bed. That’s all the laundry.”

And yet the jeans Lucy sought weren’t there. So clearly I was either, (a) cruelly plotting to derail her wardrobe plans for the day or (b) a complete idiot. Either way, she was pissed.

So she stomped down the hall and I went through my previously-mentioned mental gymnastics in what seemed like a protracted pause but probably amounted to a split second. Then, of all the possible responses to Lucy’s snit, I landed on, “You get back here, young lady!” Then I launched into a decidedly “Southern” tirade about respect, appreciation and common-damned-decency. And yes, I stuck the landing.

I mentioned in a recent blog post that it matters deeply to me what kind of people I let loose on this world when Lucy and Ben are ready to go out there in it. But raising kind, considerate, well-mannered children is exhausting and as it did on this particular day, it occasionally occurs to me that raising a couple of little assholes would be a whole lot easier.

Ben and Lucy are good kids easily 87% of the time. For the 13% of the time that they are varying degrees of rotten, it would certainly be easier to ignore that behavior and roll the dice that the 87% would win out. Easier has never really been my style, though, tired can be fixed with coffee and let's face it, no one likes an asshole. So instead of ignoring the 13% and hoping it won't persist, I take a deep breath, balance out my wine-to-coffee ratio and get back to the business of raising them right (even when “the business of raising them right” takes the form of a perhaps-louder-than-absolutely-necessary, Southern tirade).

Maybe someday they’ll thank me for their compassionate world-view, strong character and impeccable manners. Or maybe they’ll complain to their therapist about my unreasonable expectations, relentless harping and frequent Southern tirades peppered with questionable language. In either event, my response will be, “I always considered raising you right to be not only my obligation, but also my extreme privilege.”

Followed by, “You’re welcome, Lucy and Ben.”