What did you do as a child that got you in the most trouble with your parents? How did they handle it?
Ummm… did I get in trouble? I must have. I don’t remember that trouble, though. Too many years have gone by and trouble never lasted for long.
My parents worried about me. I was geeky before geeky was cool. I radiated nerd at times before nerd had a name. Socially, I suffered when I was very young. I was the only known Star Trek fan in my elementary school. Middle school got better. I made a few friends. (Hi, Cara!) I learned to ski. I started learning Spanish. In high school, I found partners in partying and life became more fun. I got to study French and Latin, and I went to Mexico for two months. Life was good.
But I didn’t get in much trouble. My mother was so desperate to help me find a social niche that she had a special note she wrote for when I skipped school: “Please excuse Sherry* because she was indisposed.” Her ethics would not allow her to claim I was ill. But she wasn’t going to let me get in trouble either. The school never pursued the issue. My best guess is they chalked the “indisposed” notes up to female trouble.
One day, when my parents left town, my brother and I were given specific orders to stay in Tacoma. Somehow, we managed to pass parents on the road to Ravensdale, far from Tacoma but close to a great barn to party in. No one got mad. My parents found the whole thing funny.
Once, when parents were in Europe, we had a party in the house, against specific verbal instructions. In my defense, I told my brother, “No parties!” when I heard him on the phone with friends. “Just a few beers,” he said. Then I went to my waitressing job at the ice cream parlor. I came home to find my home packed with wall-to-wall beer drinkers, happily greeting me. Later that night, the screen door glass was shattered in a fight over a girl. My brother and I replaced the glass, but we did not manage to get all the blood out of the concrete. My mom refused to buy the grape juice story. Our young neighbor Kenny finally busted us. When mom asked him about the spots, he said, “That’s where they had the big fight and broke out the screen door!”
The next time my folks went to Europe, some elderly woman stayed with us, but I don’t remember anyone getting upset with me. The time after that, the elderly woman was gone and we were on our own again. If not for the beer caps under the couch, we would have gotten away with that vacation gathering, but nobody seemed to care anyway. My sense was that my parents were realists. They expected that sort of behavior from unsupervised adolescents.
My dad had a short fuse and could easily become angry over little things, but those moods blew past quickly. The big things both parents handled well. You could break a beautiful chandelier with your baton, drop a TV or shoot a hole in the ceiling and you would get a lecture, but you didn’t exactly get in trouble. I didn’t anyway. I got cautioned, which was not at all the same sort of thing.
I think my girls might say that I raised them the way I was raised. I’d recommend it. I always knew I could call my parents if I drank too many margaritas. Someone would drive me home. I’d probably be cautioned the next day and I might have to dissect where I’d screwed up, but parents are supposed to help you figure that stuff out, and my take is that my folks did a great job.
Of course, I suspect I was a pretty easy kid to raise.
*Jocelyn was Sherry once.
