Memory Lane

I was writing in my journal tonight and my mind wandered to childhood years.  I just thought I'd post a little section of it that some of my siblings might remember or at least find interesting...

When you become a mom you also realize as you tell your children things that you don’t want them to do, that you did exactly those same things when you were a kid.  And you might feel a little guilty…but not enough to not tell them those things.  The tricky part is when there’s proof and the kids find it.  I remember this picture we used to wave in my mom’s face sometimes when she’d tell us our shorts were too short and to go change.  It was her and her best friend in these super short white shorts and we’d start a little campaign with “What I’m wearing is NOTHING like what you used to wear!”  You’d have to know my mom to fully get this because she’s so modest and sweet but this one would really get her going and we knew it… “That was a MARCHING BAND UNIFORM!” Followed by us saying something like, “Oh so if I join the marching band I can wear-“ but we didn’t get very far with that because she’d interrupt with, “Ha! Yes, if you joined the marching band you can wear whatever you want.  I’d sure like to see that.”  Yeah that argument fell flat real fast.  It was pretty safe for her too. We didn’t even have a marching band…

            You know eventually that picture went missing.  Couldn’t find it anywhere.  I just liked to get my mother fired up sometimes, it was fun to tease her because she is so patient and it was so hard to make her mad.  There isn’t a mean bone in her body. Even when she was really fed up we knew she didn’t mean it.  One of the things we really liked to do was play tag with my Dad in the evening.  This was in the house, and it was just this ongoing little game that wasn’t too rowdy, the whole point was you didn’t want to be “it” when you went to bed.  Well, okay, sometimes it really did get rowdy, but not always!  Dad would lay on the floor near the doorway and we’d have to get past him to get to bed so there were always various tactics in use like pretending you weren’t playing anymore and nonchalantly strolling past, waiting to see if he’d fall asleep or forget, or run through when he wasn’t looking, etc.  Sometimes these games would stretch quite some time past bedtime and mom was ready to go to bed.  She couldn’t sleep unless the entire house was quiet so she’d have to wait for everyone else to go to bed too.  When she got REALLY tired of waiting and telling us we needed to be done and go to bed now, she’d eventually get the broom out (that’s when we knew she was serious and we needed to end the game quick) and start chasing us around the living room.  While we knew that meant we needed to go to bed it was just the most hilarious thing to see and we’d be laughing uproariously still trying to get one last “tag” in on the way to bed.  It was so funny ‘cause what was she going to do once she caught us with the broom?”  She wasn’t going to hit anyone with it, it was more like she was trying to sweep us out of the room with it :).  I guess you just have to know her.  And when she was mad at us she’d call us names like, “You little stinker!”  That was the most common one.  Or, “You little munchkin.”  It didn't engender much fear.  

I actually said that to my husband the other day.  I had cleaned the closet and done this really awesome job of organizing everything, and he went through it and pulled out all this stuff I had just put in there and LEFT it on the living room floor.  When I went to clean the living room and saw what he'd done to it I hollered, "You little stinker!" and started on this mini rampage. He didn't even know I was talking to him.  Eventually he went, "What, oh, you mean me?!"  Yeah, thanks mom :)