I Have Become My Parents

Why is it when we reach a certain age we think we are grown? You know what I mean, the point where your body starts maturing and boobs sprout and you get as tall as your Mom. Well, not in my case, my boobs got bigger and I never reached the exalted height Mom attained but seemed destined to remain a shrimp at 5 foot. And a half inch! ( not much, but I need all I can get) At some point during our aging process, we always determine that we are at least as intelligent as our parents, more sophisticated and certainly should be in control of our destinies. No over-age being of civilized behavior should or would tell us how to think, feel or act! How dare they, the keepers of our future, think to educate us on how to conduct ourselves when we know perfectly well what are the responsible and appropriate actions required to be the epitome of adulthood and wisdom! Then came the battles, those clashes of will that were both noisy and unrestrained. Our quests for freedom, the right of choice in the direction of our life and the questioning of parental authority that our predecessors have heard from the beginning of time. Opposition came in the form of the reasoning behind the rules they imposed on us, the love they bore us - hence the care so diligently given to protecting us, and finally the authoritative “BECAUSE I SAID SO!!”

We rebelled! Disobedience took many forms for a group of determined young people. From a small white lie, nothing very important in essence, although to our parents any lie was as devious as committing murder, to the ultimate infraction - doing the bad thing anyway, with total disregard of the reasoning why we shouldn’t, blatantly brandishing our bravery in the face of our parents disapproval. Always there were consequences for our misdemeanors, no matter how minor. From a scolding, usually given with the thought to discourage the committing of the action again right on up to grounding, loss of telephone and/or television privileges being the least severe penalty. And being a pre-adult and a girl at that, loss of the telephone, the ultimate source of communication between non-driving adolescents, was devastating. The harshest of all was the revoking of the right to “GO”, the simple act of leaving home, thereby being rendered afloat in the quagmire of a hoard of loved ones who, at the moment, were the last people you wanted to spend time with. I suppose the ultimate punishment was the good old fashioned spanking, although not of the wood shed variety. Mom and Dad, had, in their estimation, rose far above this choice location of chastisement. The fact that we had no woodshed could also have had some bearing on this fact. The vast majority of whippings we ever got came from Mom. And were usually well deserved. At the least. The earliest thrashing I can remember was with a keen switch, hell on little bare legs. More humiliating was the fact that the switch in question was usually destined to be obtained by the wrongdoer, the price we paid for deliberate misbehavior. Mom would send us, the prisoner on trial, demoralized and apprehensive, on that horrendous errand, the purveyor of the means of our own punishment. Too small a limb from whatever semi-thorny bush we could find, and the punishment was doubled (or was threatened to be). Too large, and, well, the thought was terrifying to a kid. Broken Leg? Maimed for life by multiple cross hatches of pus oozing strips of torn flesh, rancid and dangling from our tiny unprotected legs.

Actually, the beatings we received from our parents were few, less numerous than we likely deserved. The elders of our home were somewhat lenient in their actions than harsh, preferring to punish us by means of guilt and common sense talk than abuse. We were lucky kids by any system of measure you choose to use. I can recall few cases where the punishment was equal to the crime we had committed, and generally were less than the consequences should have been. We were raised with love, abundant and freely given by our parents. I have found, to my growing dismay, that I have become my parents. Shocking how the truisms, orders and rules flying from my lips once before graced my ears growing up! My children, now mostly grown, voiced the same objections to policy in my household, voicing the age old cry of adolescents everywhere - “But Why Not?!” And received the same answer -
“BECAUSE I SAID SO!!”