May 17, 2008

Phrased and confused

By Malcolm Fleschner / Humor Columnist

I'm proud to say that I've been preparing for parenthood ever since my own youth, when I dedicated a great deal of thought to what kind of parent I wanted to be. Or, more precisely, to the kind of parent I didn't want to be - specifically, the unreasonable, dictatorial kind like my mother, who forced her kids to do chores like take out the trash and unload the dishwasher with no regard to whether "Mork and Mindy" was about to come on, the kind who was too cheap to buy her son an Atari video game system, despite repeated explanations about how every other child in school already had one and that her son was rapidly becoming the laughingstock of the neighborhood because of his inability to reach level two in a simple game of "Asteroids."

Often, after Mom unfairly demanded that I perform yet another chore - say, cleaning up my room - I would generously volunteer my thoughts on her parental shortcomings.
"When I grow up, I'm going to be a cool parent - I won't make my kids clean their rooms," I would shout from behind the pile of toys, sports equipment, candy wrappers and rapidly petrifying dirty socks I was trying to bulldoze from my bedroom floor into an already overstuffed closet. I'm still not exactly sure how my presumptive future child's messy room was supposed to show my mother the error of her ways.

Future Me: "Well, Mom, take a good look at your grandson's room. Quite a pig sty, isn't it?"

Mom: "Yes, it's disgusting."

Future Me: "So what do you have to say for yourself?"

Mom: "I am so sorry. You were right all along. Can you ever forgive me?"

Frankly, my mother's unreasonable demands might have been tolerable if they weren't always accompanied by her favorite parental catchphrases that seemed designed to irritate me. For example, after telling her I'd finished with my room, she always responded by fixing me with a skeptical look and saying, "Really? Will it pass inspection?"

Her frequent use of this particular expression merely confirmed my suspicions that before having children she'd done a stint as a Marine Corps drill instructor. Either that or a prison warden - I was never sure. Somehow I resisted the urge to offer a smart remark like, "Will it pass inspection? How the hell should I know - you're the inspector!" I didn't want to risk magnifying my woes by being told to drop and give her 200 pushups or perhaps getting sent to solitary confinement.

Other "greatest hits" from Mom's parental catchphrase library that I came to know and loathe included "Because I said so," "Don't make me stop this car," and "How many times do I have to tell you not to play ball in the house/chew with your mouth open/use your sister's stuffed animals for target practice?" In retrospect, perhaps I should consider myself lucky that my parents divorced when I was only a year old, sparing me the indignity of having to hear that classic, "Just wait until your father comes home."

Much as I hated all of these admonitions, my least favorite was unquestionably "What's the matter with you?" Mom trotted out this chestnut whenever she caught me doing something particularly dimwitted, such as conducting a highly scientific experiment into the comparative combustibility of plastic army men versus plastic army men doused with lighter fluid. I hated this question because it always left me flustered, unable to produce a good answer. Not until college when I studied child psychology did I realize that the proper response to "What's the matter with you?" would have been, "Well, it basically comes down to 'nature' or 'nurture,' Mom, and either way you're responsible."

Faced with such an oppressive environment, all that got me through childhood was the determination that I would never subject my own children to any of these phrases. Now that I have young children of my own, I realize that my mother may not have been quite the ogre I painted her out to be in my many pleading letters to Mr. Rogers, the local office of Child Protective Services and the United Nations' secretary-general. Nevertheless, so far I have lived up to my pledge to avoid using any of my mother's signature lines on my kids.

Mind you, this doesn't make me the World's Greatest Dad or anything (my own father continues to retain that title - along with the T-shirt to prove it). It just means that as my kids get into their prime misbehaving years I'm going to have to think of irritating catchphrases all my own to keep them in line. So far the most effective one I've come up with is, "Should we see what your grandmother has to say about this?"


E-mail Malcolm with the least favorite parental reprimands from your childhood at Malcolm@CultureShlock.com.