Things You Should Never Tell Mom
Like many of you, I spent Mothers Day with my mom. Well most of you probably didn't spend the day with my mom. Hopefully you were visiting your own mother, but you know what I mean.
Mom and I (and dad) spent the first part of the day at the museum, and then had a fine dinner at a Japanese restaurant later as dusk approached. It was a very enjoyable day.
As is often the case when we get together for dinner, we reminisced about the days when my siblings and I were children; that heady period when life was simple and all the world seemed sweet and new. It's fun to remember all the good times, and to reflect with maturity on the not so good times. And it's interesting to look back now on the things I did growing up through the eyes of an adult, and to imagine what must have been going through the minds of my parents at the time.
There's a strange dynamic at play in the relationship between parents and children. As we grow, we struggle with the authority of our moms and dads and the impulsiveness of youth, giving in to both at various times until we mature. We love and respect our parents, and for the most part we follow the rules they establish for us. But at the same time, we're devious and adventurous, and often disregard warnings, recommendations, and orders from them as though they were never spoken.
Some of the escapades we're a part of that fall outside parental law would certainly get us in trouble, so as kids, we go to extremes to keep mom and dad from finding out about them. Once we become adults, however, we don't mind revealing to our parents those things we did as children that went directly against their parental grain. The statute of limitations on childhood crimes runs out about the time we graduate from college anyway, or when we get real jobs and move out of their house. So we're free to talk about them.
What are they going to do, ground us?
But during the conversation on Mothers Day, I discovered that despite that dynamic, there are still some things that you should never share with your parents; with your mother in particular. There are some things you should simply never tell mom.
For example, you should probably never tell mom that you "borrowed" the neighbor's truck and drove it to the beach when you were 13. That alone is bad enough, but mention that you ran out of gas on the way home and had to smuggle a bag of pot into the ghetto for the gas station attendant so he would give you enough gas to get the neighbor's truck home, and her blood pressure will rise to dangerous levels before your eyes.
It's a bad idea to regale mom with stories of hopping cargo trains to the next town, if you're going to include the part about jumping off the moving train into the river when it crossed a trestle that towered 50 feet above the water. And if you spruce up the story further with the part about the man in the caboose aiming a hunting rifle at you and your friends, your mom might just have a conniption fit on the spot.
Think twice about telling mom how you and your friends snuck a bottle of whiskey from your friend's parent's liquor caninet and climbed a 75 foot water tower after most of the booze was in your bellies. And strongly reconsider including the part about balancing on a two-inch wide rail that circled the top of the tower so you could write your name with a spray paint can higher on the tower than some guy named Chavez had declared his love for Maria in a similar shade of paint. And seek the wisdom of the town elders if you have to before you add how on your climb down, you misplaced a foot on the ladder rung and fell to the ground with a painful thud. Otherwise mom might just pass out right in front of you.
And you should never, under any circimstances, tell mom about setting the Brown family's pasture on fire, or breaking into the elementary school gymnasium in the middle of the night, or running from the police after accidentally crashing a mini-bike into old man Wesley's boat, or sneaking into your girlfriend's bedroom at 2am and hiding in the closet when her father came in to investigate a noise, or breaking your dad's driver on the hood of the gang's car after getting jumped and nearly knifed by some Vatos Locos; unless of course you want to see her head explode and the rest of her devolve into a throbbing ball of worry.
Our moms had to put up with a lot from us growing up, and we all no doubt were sneaky enough to get away with more than our parents would allow. Such is the nature of being a kid.
And we should feel free to tell those stories to our folks now that we are adults, and now that we can look back with the proper amount of wonder and dismay and fright at our own actions.
But just remember, no matter how old you get, no matter how mature your relationship is, no matter how well you soften the details, there are still some things you should never tell mom.
Mom and I (and dad) spent the first part of the day at the museum, and then had a fine dinner at a Japanese restaurant later as dusk approached. It was a very enjoyable day.
As is often the case when we get together for dinner, we reminisced about the days when my siblings and I were children; that heady period when life was simple and all the world seemed sweet and new. It's fun to remember all the good times, and to reflect with maturity on the not so good times. And it's interesting to look back now on the things I did growing up through the eyes of an adult, and to imagine what must have been going through the minds of my parents at the time.
There's a strange dynamic at play in the relationship between parents and children. As we grow, we struggle with the authority of our moms and dads and the impulsiveness of youth, giving in to both at various times until we mature. We love and respect our parents, and for the most part we follow the rules they establish for us. But at the same time, we're devious and adventurous, and often disregard warnings, recommendations, and orders from them as though they were never spoken.
Some of the escapades we're a part of that fall outside parental law would certainly get us in trouble, so as kids, we go to extremes to keep mom and dad from finding out about them. Once we become adults, however, we don't mind revealing to our parents those things we did as children that went directly against their parental grain. The statute of limitations on childhood crimes runs out about the time we graduate from college anyway, or when we get real jobs and move out of their house. So we're free to talk about them.
What are they going to do, ground us?
But during the conversation on Mothers Day, I discovered that despite that dynamic, there are still some things that you should never share with your parents; with your mother in particular. There are some things you should simply never tell mom.
For example, you should probably never tell mom that you "borrowed" the neighbor's truck and drove it to the beach when you were 13. That alone is bad enough, but mention that you ran out of gas on the way home and had to smuggle a bag of pot into the ghetto for the gas station attendant so he would give you enough gas to get the neighbor's truck home, and her blood pressure will rise to dangerous levels before your eyes.
It's a bad idea to regale mom with stories of hopping cargo trains to the next town, if you're going to include the part about jumping off the moving train into the river when it crossed a trestle that towered 50 feet above the water. And if you spruce up the story further with the part about the man in the caboose aiming a hunting rifle at you and your friends, your mom might just have a conniption fit on the spot.
Think twice about telling mom how you and your friends snuck a bottle of whiskey from your friend's parent's liquor caninet and climbed a 75 foot water tower after most of the booze was in your bellies. And strongly reconsider including the part about balancing on a two-inch wide rail that circled the top of the tower so you could write your name with a spray paint can higher on the tower than some guy named Chavez had declared his love for Maria in a similar shade of paint. And seek the wisdom of the town elders if you have to before you add how on your climb down, you misplaced a foot on the ladder rung and fell to the ground with a painful thud. Otherwise mom might just pass out right in front of you.
And you should never, under any circimstances, tell mom about setting the Brown family's pasture on fire, or breaking into the elementary school gymnasium in the middle of the night, or running from the police after accidentally crashing a mini-bike into old man Wesley's boat, or sneaking into your girlfriend's bedroom at 2am and hiding in the closet when her father came in to investigate a noise, or breaking your dad's driver on the hood of the gang's car after getting jumped and nearly knifed by some Vatos Locos; unless of course you want to see her head explode and the rest of her devolve into a throbbing ball of worry.
Our moms had to put up with a lot from us growing up, and we all no doubt were sneaky enough to get away with more than our parents would allow. Such is the nature of being a kid.
And we should feel free to tell those stories to our folks now that we are adults, and now that we can look back with the proper amount of wonder and dismay and fright at our own actions.
But just remember, no matter how old you get, no matter how mature your relationship is, no matter how well you soften the details, there are still some things you should never tell mom.
posted by Sam Ogden at
12:27 PM
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