I read an article recently about a study in which researchers analyzed the brains of teenagers. In this experiment, they had the kids listen to a 30-second clip of their mother criticizing them. Here is a sample of one of the critiques: “One thing that bothers me about you is that you get upset over minor issues. I could tell you to take your shoes from downstairs. You’ll get mad that you have to pick them up and actually walk upstairs and put them in your room.”
Category: Childhood
If there is one things kids love, it’s canned speeches that they hear over and over and over again.
They particularly love these when they are in response to the laments of how woeful their lives are.
Categories
Armadillo 1, Parker 0
It was your typical father-son conversation.
MY SON: Dad, I’m stuck.
ME: Can you reach the armadillo?
MY SON: Not quite.
It all started the other night at my parents’ house as we were sitting on the back deck enjoying the evening. Behind my parents’ house are some woods that admittedly may not seem large now, but seemed huge when we moved there when I was four. They are at least big enough for me to have gotten lost in them as a child, a fact that my family still finds funny to this day.
Because it’s kinda how it’s drawn up in the manual, my kids are a pretty solid combination of my wife and me.
My daughter looks like my wife, which is fortunate, because no 14-year-old girl should have to go through life looking like me.
I love fairy tales. In particular, I love the happy ending of fairy tales, where everything works out in the end and life is super-dee-duper perfect at the end of the story. I am a bit of a sentimental sap in this manner. I want the good guy to win. I want karma to be exacted on those deserving, both good and bad. And ultimately, I want the protagonist to live happily ever after.
So I was sitting at a restaurant recently with my family when I heard the blare of a siren.
Naturally, I did what any person would do and began looking around wildly for my chance to rubberneck. Ambulance? Fire truck? Police and a live performance of “Cops!”? Oh the possibilities!
Yes, baseball is America’s pastime, despite the fact that it currently lags in popularity behind about eight other sports, reality TV shows and yoga.
I love a nap.
Love, love, love a nap. Just a quick recharge of the system. And I especially love napping while traveling.
As a kid, falling asleep in the car and waking up at your destination was as close to teleportation as you could get. I mean, think about it — you doze off somewhere around Atlanta and then, boom, you’re waking up in your bed.
In just about a year, my daughter will be eligible to get a driver’s license.
There, you have ample warning.
Lest you think I am picking on my daughter, I am not. At least, not just my daughter. I am painting with a very broad brush and including every 15-year-old on the planet, mainly because I was once a 15-year-old with a driver’s license.
I was standing in line at the checkout at the grocery store. The woman in front of me looked at me and said, “I’ve been waiting for you all my life.”
My first thought was, “Uh-oh. What did I do to her in kindergarten that she has held a 35-year grudge against me? Can I give her back the Crayons now? I know I can’t uneat the glue.”