How Come?

It only seems right that by my age and stage, I should have the honour and respect of my miserable, mangey, self-assured offspring. I should by now have assumed the same position of reverence that my own parents enjoyed. That straight-spined silent obedience that I remember with such fondness and unrequitted joy.

When I bellow threats at the fourth attempt to rise my slumbering, dozey, messy daughters from their duvet nests, ought I really endure them telling me to settle down and quit yelling?

Something gone terribly wrong with the world, I gotta tell ya.

Now, on the farm, we knew the drill. Get up at 7:00, with your very own alarm clock set very, very quietly to a rock music station. Never ever allow that volume to go past two notches, lest your parents should hear the evil emenating from their loved ones bedsides. Get up. Do the chores, milk the pigs, haul the bales uphill six miles, groom the kitties. Have a shower, curl the hair into feathers, apply the blue eyeliner,make your bed, and at the exact stroke of 7:30, ascend the stairs and assume your position at the breakfast table in time for the reading of Our Daily Bread. Miss it and you die. Don't even think about missing it. Don't waste any time at the breakfast table with communicating, laughing, or discussing rides or sports or lessons for the evening. We won't be having any of those. Never ever scrape excess butter off your toast and back into the butter dish. People have died for lesser crimes than this.

Make your own lunch.

We won't be having any of that store-bought convenient nonsense either. It's simply unnecessary. Well, on second thought, you'll find some thinly sliced mock chicken and some ten day old sandwhich bread that fell off a truck on its way to the Union Gospel Mission. Those will go well with the bulk, speckled, reduced-in-price bananas that will make your mock chicken taste like unsweetened banana bread sans chocolate chips by lunchtime. Two white cream cookies minus frosting and sprinkles will complete your brown bag lunch.

Now, run downstairs right quick to get that eye liner and mascara applied. Then straight out the door and down the driveway to meet the 8:05 morning school bus. Don't let mom catch you looking like a harlot either. She'll curl her lip in disgust, not speak to you for four days, and increase your ARBEIT exponentially. Simply not worth the cost.

None of this Mahhhhhhhhhhhhhom, Did you make me some coffee? There's nothing for lunches. Where's the lettuce, mom? I don't like these juice boxes. Didn't you get me those protein bars from Costco? Mom. Quit nagging. I don't nnnneeeeeed to be at school until 9:05. New rules that you know absolutely nothing about. Mom. The straightener won't work. Mom? When are we going shopping?

Sheesh. What about some Shinka Fleish on buns, a little condemnation for breakfast, and some good old fashioned hard labour as a life style?


Yep, something, somewhere went terribly wrong.
And I have a sinking feeling that it all started back there with that contraband blue eyeliner.

I shoulda known my sins would find me out.