I'll Blog You!

Like most moms probably do, I worry about how I am as a parent.  I yell way too much, have way less patience than I should, and have a whole lot of nights where I pray that God just let them turn out OK in spite of me and my very, very lacking abilities to be the mom that I should.  And then there are the threats.  I have lots of threats, but turns out, I've got threatener in my genes.  My mother was the best threatener I've ever known.  Looking back, I really have no clue what a whole lot of the threats meant but heeded to them all the same.  I've recently pondered on the threats we received as children and thought it only right that I share.

The threat that stands out in my mind the most was the ever popular, "I'm gonna beat the daylights out of you."  Now I think having the daylights beaten out of you would really hurt, but to be honest, I'm 39 years old and still have no idea what the daylights are.  Usually this threat came after we did things like put a rubberband around the kitchen sink hose trigger and pointed it toward the center of the sink where a random sink turner onner might stand, ie my mom.  It would be about the time she flipped the faucet knob and her glasses were dripping water  and her hair was wet in the front that we'd hear echoed through the halls of our house, "I AM GOING TO BEAT THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU ALL!!!"  Now this one comes to mind because just yesterday, the 6th grader played the exact same trick on his mother yet again.  About the time the water hit my face, I found myself screaming, you guessed it, "I AM GOING TO BEAT THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU!!!"  As a side bar, I would like to mention here and now that it was this same woman that threw out these threats so freely when I was a child that taught my son the rubberband around the sink trick.  Not cool, Mom.  Not cool.

Next up on the Favorite Threats Top 10, "I'm gonna choke your goozle out."  Where, oh where, is one's goozle?  Hopefully, it is like your appendix or tonsils- if she ever really chokes it out, we wouldn't really need it anyway.  I hope my children don't need theirs either because one more time of finding them building the entire NASA fleet of space shuttles or an arsenal of guns out of Trio blocks instead of putting their shoes on after the twelfth time of telling them, there is a chance I might "choke their goozle out" because I too make that same threat.  "Son, I am gonna choke your goozle out if I tell you one more time!"  And like generations before him, he looks at me confused, I'm sure wondering where his goozle is and if he needs it.  He puts the blocks to the side and puts on at least one of his shoes until he's once again distracted by the thoughts of a new Trio invention because although he's not so sure about the goozle thing, he's not willing to take any chances, just like his mother before him.

Then there is the universal threat.  Now I've discussed this threat with some friends about my age and sure enough, their mamas knew the universal threat too.  It went something like this.
Me (yelling at my mom while she's cleaning just spilt, sticky grape Kool-Aid from the bottom of the refrigerator)- "I want some more Kool-Aid."
Mom:  "I'll Kool-Aid you!"
or
Me (yelling at mom after she's been locked in a house with all of us while my dad worked)- "MOOOOM, Joey threw a shoe at me!"
Mom- "I'll shoe you!"

Did it have to make sense?  Nope.  Were we ever brave enough to say that it didn't make sense?  Nope.  Am I impressed that she could customize this threat to any object living or non?  Pretty much.  After being told the Sixth grader left his Social Studies book at school and needs to do homework have I said, "I'll Social Studies book you!"?  Well, no comment.  All I can figure about this threat is that the kids finally get to be so much that mamas just start spewing random craziness.

Now some might think, my goodness, poor girl, she had a really mean mom.  Those some would be very wrong.  I had a merciful mother with much self-control.  I'll tell you why.  I have one sister and one brother.  As far as I know, all three of us still have our daylights and goozles, and none of us deserve to still have them.  None of us have ever been "'Kool-Aided" just as my son did not get "Social Studied booked".  Here's the kicker.  I remember many, many occasions when we so deserved all of these things. We were annoying, and lots of the time really, really annoying (especially my brother, just sayin').  I guess that was an early lesson in grace from my mom.  What we deserved was the daylights beaten out of us and our goozles choked out, but she did not give us what we deserved.   My husband did however get shoed once, but that's a whole different blog.

Dr. Phil and Jame Dobson and Dr. Spock all have varying opinions on threats and punishments and parenting.  I don't know what all they think.  I'm assuming they would think my mom (and dad but this is about her for the moment) did not do perfect parenting like they would think about any of us.  I know Mom will tell me now that she did too much this or not enough that like most of us moms think about our momming.  But here's the thing, for all the parenting Mom did or didn't do by the books, my siblings and I sort of turned out OK.  Are we perfect?  Give me a minute here.  HAHAHAHAHA!!!  Ok, I'm better.  We are certainly, certainly, certainly not perfect.  I could tell you a lot of stories about that, but that would be another blog and probably one I should just skip writing for the sake of healthy sibling relationships.  But there a few things the three of us are.  First and foremost, we are all three Christians.  We all three married Christians.  And we are all three raising our own children in Christian homes.  Are we doing it perfectly?  Absolutely not.  We love our spouses and have stayed with them, in some cases when the vows we made,  for better or worse, in sickness and health, have been put to the test,.  Our mom and dad have over 47 years in together.  Coincidence?  I think not.  We all three love our parents and have respect for them and value their opinion.  And none of us have been in therapy....even after our goozles and daylights have been threatened multiple times.

So do I ever think I'll see Dr. Phil have a show on healthy threatening?  Probably not.  Will Dobson ever have a chapter in Bringing Up Boys on How to Effectively Remove Their Goozles?  I'm going to have to go with a no on that one.  Did it work for us?  Well, we're not great, but to be honest, we're not doing too bad.  Do I think my mom could give Dobson and Phil and Spock (although I think he may be dead)some advise on a chapter or two?  Absolutely.

So I hope when my boys look back and think about things, the crazy makes them giggle like it does me.  I hope they know how much their mama loves them even when patience isn't always her virtue just like I know my mom has always loved her kids and frankly, I hope at least one once or twice, they throw out some empty, non-sense making threats.  I'd hate to end such a fun family tradition now.

OH, and Mom, this is for teaching him about the sink