1. She used your middle name when screaming from another room that you needed to report to her immediately.
2. Dead silence on her end of the line when you called her at work for the twenty-seventh time in one afternoon.
3. Proclaiming at dinner that you don’t really care for liver and onions, and your plate is suddenly whisked away from in front of you.
4. You arrive at your house two seconds after the designated time to stop playing dodge ball with the neighborhood kids, and you see that the porch light has been turned off.
5. Anything that requires Mom to consult with Grandma about the appropriate punishment.
6. Getting off the bus after school and realizing that she was already home from work.
7. Those moments when you stupidly said something like “everybody else’s Mom is buying them a G.I. Joe!”
8. You walk into your bedroom and discover that your favorite toy is missing, replaced by a mop bucket and a sponge.
9. Any conversation that she starts with “I was talking to your teacher today…”
10. She slams on the brakes for no apparent reason while you and your sister are arguing with each other in the backseat of the car.
11. You threaten to call and report the horrible injustices you are suffering within this family and she hands you the phone.
12. You are squirming around in the pew at church, all fussy and bored, resulting in the accidental dislodging of the hymnal from its proper resting place, and the resounding boom of book meeting floor interrupts the pastor’s sermon on proper child-rearing.
13. You encounter Mom sitting at the kitchen table with the next-door neighbor, the old one who never drops by just to chat or have a cocktail.
14. She walks into the den and is fully aware that you have been jumping on the couch again even though you stopped doing that ten minutes ago when one of the important springs made an anguished noise.
15. The dreaded words “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you…”
16. The fake smile she gives the floor manager at the department store after he informs her that you were caught running in between the clothing racks and knocking things over.
17. The lack of the phrase “just wait until your father gets home” when she confronts you with another ill-advised activity, thus negating the cool-down period before retribution…
18. Hearing the trash truck drive by the house without stopping, meaning the trash you were supposed to carry out there did not quite make the journey, despite multiple memos from the home office urging you to make sure such a thing happened.
19. You fail to fully appreciate the socks and underwear that were graciously wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree just for you, and she quietly marches over to the really big package that you haven’t opened yet and tears your name tag off of it.
20. That look she would give you when she was having to remind herself how very much she loved you….
Originally posted in “The Sound and the Fury” on 05/13/12 and “Bonnywood Manor” on 09/09/16. Slight changes made. And yes, that’s an actual picture of me and the first of my sisters. I’m sure she’s accusing me of some type of manufactured malfeasance, one of her specialties…
Categories: My Life
Bonnywood Manor 
All those warning signs that say “too late”.
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Indeed. The exact details of the ensuing punishment might be a little murky, but your goose was cooked…
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This has the tell-tale ring of an autobiography 😏
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Me? I was an angel. [Fingers crossed behind back.]
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😆
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21.You say I hate it here, I’m running away. Her response: Can I drive you to the bus?
22. She cries.
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Oh, my parents helped me pack a little suitcase during one of my threatened getaway attempts. (There’s an account of this incident buried somewhere in the archives; I might dust that one off in the next day or two.) But when Mom would cry? Oh boy. That took the wind out of my diminutive sails…
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Crying Mom, the worst.
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We knew if Ma clenched her teeth. If there was any tongue visible, we ran. Far away. Would only come back when another adult entered the picture, because at least then there were witnesses,, (a bit exaggerated, but not by much. Ma didn’t suffer fools and didn’t raise any either).
I’m the eldest and only girl in my nuclear group, and it seemed to me that while all twenty of your rules applied to me, maybe 15 of them applied to the next in line, but the baby? He got away with murder (almost literally once) and rarely got the clenched teeth with tongue. He still knew that was bad, and would run away with us…
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I understand all about being the oldest. I was the test run for everything, and since my parents were still young they had lots of energy to come up with creative punishments. By the time the last few kids rolled along they could burn the house down and still get ice cream for dessert…
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On an unrelated note (this happened AFTER I commented the first time)
(and I believe you don’t ‘do’ awards and that’s just fine)
I am supposed to notify you that I’ve nominated you for The Mystery Blogger award. This doesn’t require any action on your part, unless you’re interested in participating. If so, you can go to my post:
http://sparksfromacombustiblemind.com/2018/03/18/award-time-2/
and see what I’m talking about. Thanks for providing me with such interesting reading material all the same! 🙂
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Thanks for the nom! You’re right, I don’t typically do the awards thing. But I’ve been nominated for quite a few over the last month, and I’m working on one mammoth response to them all. I’ll add you to the list…
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All these are excruciatingly real.
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From both sides of the story, yes?
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Wow, you got attitude in that photo!
#1 — my middle name is short (Joy), but my first name has four syllables! Four! Oh man, when I heard my entire name? I was dead.
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The thing with the real attitude in that photo is the creepy tricycle. Instead of a seat, it has a wire basket of eggs. Perhaps someday I will share the sordid story of such, but for now I will leave you with “BRI-an GREG-ory LAGEOSE! Get in here!” [Gulp.]
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Actually the worst moment with my mother (who speaks like Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey mode) was when I was 26 and we were having an, I thought fairly reasonable debate …. she growled ‘the trouble with you is you are so f****ing articulate’ – I had no IDEA she even knew the word and to have it fired at me – it stripped two decades with the ease of one of those giant machetes well-oiled boys use on coconut husks in tropical places, and there I was shuddering and waiting to be sent to my room for at least a month, any notion that I had my own house to go to entirely evaporated 😟
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Oh, that triggers some memories for me as well, albeit in a bit of a reverse. As you may have surmised, I was a rather studious little child, and as such I had a vocabulary one did not normally find in a little Oklahoma urchin. Neither my parents nor any of my siblings were impressed with my fancy two-dollar words, and when I would forget my place and throw something multi-syllabic into any conversation, heated or otherwise, the entire clan would turn against me. My words were my stigmata, in multiple ways.
But enough about me. Could share some more insight into these well-oiled boys with the giant machetes?
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Your reply gives me the relief of a mighty snort – hurrah, I have been starving those nasal passages lately. I can only imagine the derision with which your swallowed dictionary of eloquence was received by your collected connecteds.
The boys are not to be shared blithely …. we must discuss privately over appropriate cocktails but I promise you would not be at all disappointed were I to make the introduction 😉
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“Collected connecteds” is a wonderful phrase…
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his reeks of many, many, many times experience 🙂 You must have been a very naughty boy. hahaheheheheahahahahhuffsnortlesnufflesnicker – chuckle, choke, cough. (sorry, go carried away).
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I was generally a very good little boy. But when I walked on the dark side, I did so with gusto… 😉
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explains a lot 🙂
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The worse the crime the quieter the voice! Well that was the way it was with my Mum.
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Mom was the master of the quite pause. When she stopped saying anything, you knew your punishment had just escalated…
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I LOVE his post, the pic of you and your sister, and your mom.
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I may or may not be personally guilty of randomly slamming on the brakes for no apparent reason while the kids are arguing in the backseat. But I must admit, it usually buys a moment or two of much-needed silence… 😀
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My dad had it down to an art, albeit a bit more violent one. He would stop with just the right degree of brisk deceleration that our upper bodies would shift forward and then he would whop us all upside the head in one clean arc, sending us toppling like dominoes. It would be very quiet for a long time after that…
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10 and there was the accompanying silence that is still hanging over the air in central Canada
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Ah, so that explains the atmospheric disturbance I can see on the weather maps…
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