Yesterday morning, I heard myself saying, "I do not have the patience for this, Baby Razor!" as she shrieked at me for no apparent reason. I started laughing before I even got to the end of the sentence. I can't be sure, but it knowing myself and my mother, it definitely sounds like one of those things I heard a lot during my early childhood, along with "Come back here!" and "Don't touch anything!"
It made me laugh because, really, what kind of a ridiculous threat is "I don't have the patience for this?" What was I going to do? Leave? "All right kid, you're on your own. Have fun figuring out how to open the fridge!"
So I sang a "Grumpy" song to drown out her whining and got her some ham & cheese.
But it got me thinking about other phrases I heard from my parents as a kid. "Sugar!" was a favorite. I think I was in college before I realized that it was their swear-substitute. Thank goodness they had one, because it got used all the time.
"This is not a democracy!" was my father's favorite, sometimes followed by "It's a benevolent dictatorship," a point teenage me liked to argue with sarcasm, which always led to "Quit being facetious, you!" I still hear that one, usually when I'm visiting them and arguing with Fox News.
These days, I hear myself repeating the phrases Baby Razor will remember. "This is not a democracy" has morphed into, "Do you have a vote here? No." And I gave my girl a first and middle name combo that's seven syllables long partially in an attempt to avoid yelling her full name when I'm annoyed at her. But I totally use what came after the full-name treatment, the most spine-chilling phrase of my youth: "I'm only going to say this once."
Of course I realize now that my parents were, for the most part, totally blowing smoke. They were never actually going to lock me in the basement if I got caught underage drinking. But they'd spent enough years putting down whatever they were doing and taking us home, or turning off the tv and sending us to our rooms that we had no idea they were bluffing on the bigger stuff. Or, as my sister put it when her son was a toddler, "The key is to be really badass when they're little, before they figure out you have no idea what you're doing."
My favorite was the "Look at me while I'm talking to you!"/"Don't you look at me with that tone of voice!" combo. One typically followed the other in a rapid succession during my teen years.
ReplyDeleteWhen my cousin Abbie was a small person, we would constantly tell her we couldn't hear her when she whined. It actually worked to stop the whining.
I got, "Don't you start with me!" as a teen. Which, in retrospect, was probably more of a plea than a threat.
ReplyDeleteI have actually broken out the, "Because I say so, that's why." Because sometimes, that's all I got. I like the benevolent dictatorship line. There is always, "This is not a democracy, this is a cheerocarcy. I'm sorry, I'm overruling you." But then you open yourself up to being called a cheertator.
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