Milage

Milage

Although Mom and Dad were always reasonable people, they didn’t always listen to me and when it came to my usual list of excuses. They had heard them all so many times that I’m sure they knew which one I was going to use in any given situation even before I did.

I didn’t always tell the entire truth, so I guess they sometimes had reason to be a bit skeptical. I was not, however, a liar trough and through. I knew when the jig was up and when it was time to come clean. A story can only be stretched so far and then it’s going to snap like an elastic band. The trick to being a convincing liar is knowing when to stop. It’s knowing when that story is going to break and come flying back at your ass, like a giant elastic boot. I never knew that.

I think almost every lie I ever told my parents came back, at some point, and kicked me in the ass in one way or another. If I said my watch had stopped and that was why I was late, Mom would have wound it that morning or she would grab my arm and tell me that it was “right now.” That’s just one example.

When I was older and took Dads car into town one evening he asked, in passing, where we had gone last night. I told him that we had just met some friends at the local teen hangout , three miles from home, and had spent the evening there. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t even sound aggravated. His only comment was, “Wow! I didn’t know town was two hundred and forty-seven miles from here. What’cha doin’ tonight . . . without the car.”

I thought, at the time, that there should be some kind of law against parental entrapment. It should be illegal for parents not give full disclosure of everything they know about any given situation before beginning questioning of the offending minor(s).

Now, however, I am a parent of six. Six of the most deviant, underhanded, sneaky, irreverent, cute, smart, loving, perfect kids to ever walk the face of the earth. I love each and every one of the six as much as the others, but all for different reasons. When one of them does something that disappoints me, I wonder how my parents were able to handle those moments. I have five other kids, and at any given time it’s quite certain that at least one, of them is doing something that will make me proud.
Something that will make up for another’s complete lack of whatever it is he or she happens to be lacking today.

My parents only had me. All they could do was hope that tomorrow would be better, that tomorrow I would miraculously gain some insight into what makes a man a man. They didn’t have any other kids to fall back on. If I was a jerk then all of their kids were jerks that day. That must be hard for parents of just one child.
Thanks Mom and Dad. I think you did a great job, considering what you had to work with. I just hope that I can do as well with my kids.