The Things They Do

I love my children.

Here, let me say that again. I love my children.

But they do things. Things that convince me that kids are the reason parents get old and die. Things that make me do things like talking to myself.

Some parents, when frustrated, mix up the kids' name.

I invent words: "I can't believe this. This is ungood!"

Ungood. Yes.

In the normal course of life, parents have to teach things to the kids by setting rules: "Don't run into the street"; "Don't play with matches!"

A normal parent shouldn't have to come up with rules like, "Don't butter the dishwasher!", "Don't peel your brother!"

But my kids come up with things to do. In particular, things involving computers.

I had to tell my kids not to unplug cables and wires from the computer. The same kids who don't want to walk the dog 300 feet, will mount this monstrous computer desk, squeeze their bodies into the 4-square-inch space back there, to unplug the pretty purple keyboard cable from the back of the computer.

"Why is the keyboard unplugged?"

"I wanted to see something..."

"See what, how the computer looks when you can't do anything with it? Maybe we'll take the tires off the car next?"

As a dedicated computer geek, I did think outside the box a little. I instructed my kids on some do's and don't's with computers...don't Instant Message with strangers...no Myspace (too young)...do not click on hyperlinks in Instant Messages or emails, especially from strangers

Well my oldest got an Instant Message from someone she didn't know. There was a hyperlink in the message.

She, of course, clicked it, and unleashed a Trojan Horse the likes of which have not been seen since Odysseus. The computer languished, unusable, a veritable paperweight for months. Why?

We're all familiar with rhetorical questions, you know, the ones you ask but don't really expect an answer to. "Do I look like an idiot?" or "Did I not make myself clear?"

My rhetorical question that day was, "Where's the little packet with the system disks that came with the computer?"

Yesh, right. Enter the confused, quizzical looks on multiple faces.

This house I'm staying in has magazines dating back to the 1960's, toy parts to things we can't even remember or identify, but that little, tiny packet was a source of intolerable clutter, so, naturally, out it went.

Thanks only to the good people at Dell was I able to get the necessary disks replaced. That kept me from breaking a rule of my own: "No bungee jumping off the roof, ok?"

I remember as a kid my Mom saying, "You keep making that face, it's going to stay that way!"

Well, seems she knew what she was talking about. My face is permanently disfigured now, in what I can only describe as a cross between a confused grimace and a deep scowl.

'cause my kids do things