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When it comes to my children, I have always tried to pick my battles wisely. The desire to cling to the last few bits of my sanity has made it imperative that I spend at least forty-five minutes of every day not fighting about something; what this means is that while I have been adamant about things like music lessons and getting clear verbal answers to my questions (if it doesn’t work on the witness stand, it doesn’t work for me), I have been somewhat laxer when it comes to things like cleaning your plate (or even using a plate) and going to bed at a reasonable hour.

I always thought that this was my choice as a parent: just like some people choose to spend their disposable income on pumpkin spice lattes while others prefer to save up for a trip to Burning Man, the decisions as to what to discipline my children for are mine and mine alone (well, and maybe my husband’s). Or at least, that’s what I always thought. Apparently however, I was wrong.

While most people would feel awkward about telling another adult they need to stop saving their money for vacation and instead start drinking more six dollar coffees, they apparently feel no such compunction about telling other parents when they should discipline their children. Or, rather, about telling other parents that they should be disciplining their children the exact same way that they themselves are.

When my children were younger I had people chastise me that it made it “hard” for them to enforce the “clean plate rule” with their own children after their kids saw that I didn’t enforce it with my own. A few of them even asked me if I could just “fake it” a little bit to make things easier on them. Because, obviously, making sure my own children weren’t completely confused wasn’t nearly as important as whether or not their kids ate all of their lima beans. (I actually did consider it, but then I thought about how I would feel if my husband asked me to “keep quiet” because some of his friends were coming over and they didn’t want their wives to notice how “uppity” I was, and I said no. And then I considered telling them I would do it if they would enroll their children in music lessons so my kids stopped asking me why they had to practice every day when their friends didn’t. In the end I just kept my mouth shut. Mostly).

Keeping my mouth (mostly) shut when other parents criticize my parenting choices hasn’t always been easy, especially when they misunderstand the reasoning behind my decisions. “You’re supposed to be a parent, not a friend,” they told me. As if making someone eat their broccoli was a friendship issue. Although it is true that I have never tried to force any of my friends to eat their veggies; however, this is not so much for fear of losing their friendship but rather fear of them rejecting all future dinner invitations). No, the reason I have never forced anyone, at any time to eat their broccoli, or honey-glazed ham, or watermelon, is that, frankly, I really don’t care what other people eat. And my children fall into the category of “other people.”

Now that my kids are older, and demonstrably healthy, I feel even better about not changing my parenting style to suit other parents, and even for (mostly) keeping my mouth shut about other parents’ habits as well. After all, my kids never developed scurvy or rickets from their broccoli-free diets, and their friends didn’t turn into axe murderers because they didn’t have music lessons. Or at least they haven’t yet. On both counts. I suppose only time (and police records) will tell.

Last night my son Clyde and I had one of those “come to Jesus” moments concerning his grades. As in, “your grades aren’t very good, and they need to be better.” Clyde spent the first half of the conversation in a state of confusion: why, he wondered, was he doing so badly? He went to every class, “mostly” paid attention, and participated in all of the activities. A quick check online solved that mystery. His bad grades were a result of the combination of not turning in his homework and then doing poorly on quizzes that contained material that has been covered in that same homework. The problem, I explained to him bluntly, was thus: he was getting poor grades because he was putting in a poor effort.

I let that sink in a bit before I continued. “If you want to do better, you have to be better. Right now you’re getting the grades you’ve earned. If you want them to be better (and you should want them to be better), you’ll have to work harder. Or, you know, at all.” He thought about it for a minute, and then I saw comprehension spread across his face. Of course! He understood the problem completely: I was crazy. And old. And out of the loop. Of course I would think that the only solution to getting better grades was to do better work—I didn’t even know what a subReddit was!

I would have been more discouraged by this response if it wasn’t for the fact that we had already gone through the same thing with his sister, Clementine, almost four years earlier. And she turned out okay. Mostly.

Of course, back when Clementine was younger and doing poorly I was more likely to blame the “everyone’s a winner” culture that children grow up with: when everyone gets the same trophy, or medal, or certificate just for showing up, there’s not much incentive to ever try any harder than anyone else does. With Clyde, however, I think I’m going to blame the gaming world, and the fact that there seems to be a “cheat” to get around almost every obstacle.

It makes sense in the gaming world: given the choice to go through the same three rooms and kill the same fifty Nazi zombies over and over again for hours upon hours, or look up a cheat code online, most sane people would choose the cheating option. (Actually, I think most sane people would rather read a book, but that’s a minority opinion in my house.) And that’s the probably the reason why most game manufacturers allow the cheat codes to exist in the first place: because they know that if they didn’t they’d end up with a bunch of disgruntled customers who could potentially end up quitting their games, unplugging their PlayStation, and picking up a book. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Here’s the thing, though: real life doesn’t need to give you cheat codes (or hand out trophies just for showing up), because real life knows that you can’t quit. It’s the only game in town. And so my struggle with Clyde (and previously, Clementine), has been simply to get them to accept the fact that there really will be no way for them to get around doing the actual work—that “Work Hard/Play Hard” is only a suitable life code if you fulfill the first part of the equation before moving on to the second. And that if there was any chance that they came from the sort of privileged background (life’s one and only “cheat code”) that allowed them to, say, get into Yale without earning it (cough!George Bush!cough!), I surely would have mentioned it by now.

Or at the very least have been using it to get around doing the hard work myself.

We live right in the very middle of Flagstaff, so with the exception of the time when Clementine was taking horseback riding lessons, every after school activity my kids have ever signed up for has been less than a fifteen minute drive away. This is the complete opposite of how I grew up—we were so far from anything that planning a trip to town was like planning a military campaign: you damn well better have everything you needed for every activity before you went out the door, because the idea of “running back home” for a missing pair of ballet shoes or soccer cleats was laughable. (On the other hand, we never had to drive anywhere at all for riding lessons—out horses lived in the back pasture.)

Because of those childhood experiences, I have never complained too much about driving my kids back and forth to their activities. (You always need to complain a little bit, otherwise they’ll get complacent). That is, I never complained too much until this year. Which is ironic, because this year Clementine has her own car, and drives herself to all of her activities. That means that all of my driving angst falls squarely on Clyde.

On Clyde and his many activities, I should say.

He really doesn’t do that much. There’s boxing, dance, and violin. That’s just three things, right? Well, three categories of things. Because violin encompasses private lessons, group lessons, and fiddle lessons. And dancing involves three separate dance classes and five separate dance rehearsals. All, for the most part, spaced out over the course of the week so that the chances of one happening right next to the other is about 20%.

That means that there is an 80% chance that they don’t happen right next to each other. Oh, they come close. Very close. About thirty minutes close. That’s right, there’s about thirty minutes between them. Which, when you live fifteen minutes away is clearly not enough time to drive home and then back again.

Clearly, that is, to everyone except Clyde.

To Clyde, it is inconceivable that we aren’t willing to drive him home between some of these activities. Even though the one time we tried it we ended up driving back and forth across Cedar Hill four times in one afternoon. It got to the point where I felt like kicking my car every time I walked out to it, and, if my car had been capable of feelings, I’m sure it would have felt like kicking me, too.

The problem is, of course, isn’t that we live too far away from all of Clyde’s activities, but that we live too close. If we lived out in the boonies like we did when I was a kid then we would all have that “military campaign” attitude, and we would all be used to bringing a book (or an iPad, DS, or Kindle) to while away the downtime. But we don’t. We’re spoiled. So spoiled, in fact, that half of my family doesn’t even see the problem with driving home just to use the bathroom. (That would be the male half.)

The obvious solution, of course, would be to just to drop Clyde off for the first activity of the afternoon and only return after the last one has finished, leaving him to occupy the downtimes himself. Obvious, maybe, but also nervous making, as the lack of common sense and foresight that typically goes into a thirteen-year-old boy’s attempts to “occupy himself” are the very reasons we signed Clyde up for so many extracurricular activities in the first place.

Besides, I’m kind of scared to see how he could occupy himself with a pair of dance shoes, boxing gloves, and a violin. I don’t think the world is ready to see that yet. I know I’m sure not.

There is a picture hanging on my refrigerator of my son, Clyde, that was taken in the third grade. It’s a school photo, which means that he looks like he has just burned down half the houses in our neighborhood and is only waiting to find a new lighter to burn down the other half. His eyes glint menacingly, he is not so much smiling as showing his teeth, and his skin looks like he has been chained up in a basement for the better part of the past year. In other words, it is a typical school photo.

I keep it on my fridge for two reasons. One, of course, is to make fun of Clyde. Because in our family, that’s just how it works: when something embarrassing—or even humiliating—happens to you, the rest of us tease you mercilessly about it forever and ever. No, we’re not trying to build moral character or teach the value of humility: we’re just mean like that. The second reason I still keep that photo on the fridge, though, is to remind myself why it is that I never, ever buy school photos.

I used to buy them every year. And every year I would open the envelope, look at the pictures, gasp in horror, and then stick those pictures in a drawer somewhere, where they will undoubtably remain until my children become so old that any photo of them taken before they are thirty is cherished simply as proof that they were once young.

Of course, just because I don’t buy the school photos doesn’t mean my kids don’t still have them taken. After all, they still need their pictures for yearbook, school IDs, nefarious government tracking purposes, and so on. And of course I’m still going to look at them, the same way I look at a wreck on the highway. And this year, when I looked at the results, I was kind of sorry I hadn’t bought a set.

They were that awful. Clyde’s weren’t really any worse than usual. He still had the serial arsonist look, but instead of looking like he had just burned down every house in the neighborhood he only looked like he had burned down one or two. For very select and obscure reasons. Like the color of the mailboxes. Clementine’s, on the other hand, were a whole new level of awful.

I’m not sure what happened. I think, maybe, that whoever was on hand with the “touch up” tool was feeling a little crazy. Or generous. Or just plain mean. Whatever the justification behind it was, the end result was that Clementine ended up with a nose worthy of La Streisand herself. It’s that big. And it’s not like it’s that big in real life, even on her worst day. Because, seriously, while it is entirely possible to have a “bad hair day,” no one, ever, has had to deal with a “bad nose day.” Until now.

My best guess is that they tried to “touch up” her various nose rings. And while the best way to get rid of a skin blemish might be to replace it with more (unblemished) skin, the best way to get rid of a nose ring is not to replace it with more nose.

Obviously.

Of course, like I said, I don’t know this for sure; since I didn’t actually buy the school photos it’s not like I have an 8 X 10 to work with or anything. No, there’s just the school ID. And maybe the enlarge function on a photocopier or two. Because, without something to hang on the refrigerator, how am I going to be able to tease her about it for years to come? After all, when it comes to prime family humiliation fodder, you know what they say: pictures or it didn’t happen.

I have never been a fan of catch phrases. Maybe it’s because I grew up a child of the seventies, where every TV show’s main character had a saying that was all their own. (Actually, that might be true for TV shows of any decade—it was only in the seventies that I watched so much TV I had the schedule memorized. Not that it was too hard to memorize four channels.) Still, if I’m going to blame my hatred of catch phrases on anything, I think that growing up hearing Mork saying “Nanoo Nanoo” and the Fonz saying “Ehhhhhh!” every week are certainly safe targets. Safe enough at least that I can probably put off my psychoanalysis session for another week.

Probably.

Anyway, it’s at least a safe enough excuse that I don’t feel like my dislike for them is too strange. Which is good, because if I thought I hated catch phrases before, on television, I had no idea how much I’d grow to dislike them when I had to deal with them in person. And in my own house, no less. And, of course, coming from the mouths of my own dreadful children.

The catch phrase currently in play? “Right this sec?” As in a question that is directed at me whenever I ask them to do something. “Hey, since you finished your shower ten minutes ago, do you think you could come turn off the water?” (This is actually something I’ve had to say.) “Right this sec?” is usually the aggravated (and aggravating) reply, to which my reply is also usually the same, an equally aggravated (and I’m sure equally aggravating), “Yes!”

Actually, when I say children I’m not being quite honest: this catch phrase belongs to my son Clyde alone. It is his alone because the one used by his older sister, Clementine is: “In a sec.” It doesn’t matter how pressing the matter might be, how long I have been hanging off the edge of the cliff or standing on the stoop juggling an armful of groceries, almost every request is answered with “In a sec.” (I say “almost” because there are some occasions that merit immediate action. “Can you come get this twenty dollar bill?” for example.)

And yet, even though Clementine has been using her particular catch phrase for about ten years now, for some reason Clyde’s version is more irritating to me. Perhaps this is because “right this sec?” actually requires a response, and therefore my participation in the ongoing charade that my children 1) actually listen to my requests, and 2) have the slightest intention of ever acceding to them.

I think I understand enough about both human and child psychology (funny how we consider those to be two different things) to know that their refusal to jump right up and follow my demands is more about them learning to separate themselves from me than it is about actually being defiant. I also know that this is a completely normal step in their development (from child to human, apparently). And yet, I still need the water in the shower turned off sometime this week.

Maybe, to avoid hearing the catchphrase I should simple avoid speaking myself. Maybe I should have cards printed saying something like, “I realize that you are your own person, completely separate and autonomous from me, however, in this case, I’d really like you to go do the thing I asked you to do, immediately.” And in return they could have cards printed with their reply. I’m pretty sure that I could get a few dozen cards made fairly cheaply. At least, their cards would come fairly cheap.

After all, how much ink does it take to print three little words?

Last weekend my husband asked some of our daughter’s friends to leave the house, a request to which Clementine took great exception. I think her exact words were so rude. And granted, maybe my husband’s choice of words (“All of you, get the !@#$ out of my house!”) were not the most poetic, or the most politic (he probably shouldn’t count on receiving his ambassadorship any time soon), but I wouldn’t call it rude, necessarily. More like forceful. Determined. Unwavering. And, in the end, necessary, as shown by the fact that even after that statement it took another three hours to get our couch back.

And this was after it had already been occupied for the previous twelve.

Clementine, however, still didn’t understand. Her view was that since during the majority of the previous twelve hours her father had been asleep, the timer on couch squatting hadn’t really started until he had woken up that morning. Or rather, since her guests had arrived shortly before her father went to bed the night before, the timer had started, but then had been put on pause. (I have to admit I was kind of rooting for this argument to work—if it did it would have all sorts of implications for the hotel industry.) My husband’s view was much less nuanced. “Naw,” he said. “It’s time for your friends to go.” And with an offended huff (and another hour or so of nagging), they went.

I can see how Clementine might have gotten the mistaken impression that her father was being unnecessarily harsh. In a normal situation, telling people to “get the !@#$ out” of your house would almost always be considered rude. However, what she needed to understand is that this was the farthest thing from a normal situation. This wasn’t a friendly visit, this was an occupation, an invasion, really, and as such needed to be handled in a different way.

Think about it this way: when you see the very first cockroach scurry across your kitchen floor do you think, “Well, it was only the one. Maybe he was just passing through?” No, at the first sign of an infestation you get out the big guns, or rather, the big can of Raid. And it is the same with couch squatters: at the first sign of an infestation, you pull out the big (or at least bad) words.

Of course, even after that explanation Clementine still didn’t see it as an infestation. She still saw it as a friendly visit. A long, drawn-out, noisy, messy visit. But then again, Clementine doesn’t pay the rent. Or the Netflix bill. Or buy the groceries. And she most definitely has never had to flip over a couch in the middle of the night to make someone understand that, no, they really weren’t welcome to crash in your living room any longer.

In other words, Clementine has never been in college.

Something tells me that sometime in the next four years or so Clementine will become intimately familiar with the kind of scenarios that make telling people to “get the !@# out of my house,” seem like the most amicable solution. She will come to realize that there are times when social cues and subtly just doesn’t work, and that waking up in the morning to see the same people who were partying in your living room the night before gets old after the twentieth or thirtieth time it happens.

When that day comes Clementine will be grateful for the memory of her father telling her friends to “get the !@#$ out” of his house. In fact, she might be so grateful that she ends up quoting him directly.

Right down to the very last !@#$.

The last time I wrote a column about how much I despised school dress codes was when my daughter, Clementine, was in her first year of middle school and was “dress-coded” for wearing a shirt with blue trim on the sleeves. Because apparently the “Blue Sleeve Trim Gang” was in town, and boy, if there’s anyone you don’t want to mess with, it’s them. Anyway, the school dress-coded her, I complained, and then, a few years later, the school closed its doors. I’m not saying I had anything to do with it, but, the fact is that I’m still around and the school isn’t. Something that Clementine’s current school might want to take into account, since now, in her senior year of high school, she has been dress-coded again.

For showing her shoulders. (Seriously, only Michelle Obama gets more grief for her arms than Clementine does.) And even though it is the same part of her anatomy that caused Clementine to be called to the office both times (well, the first time at least—since she was working as an office aide technically she was already in the office when the second incident happened), the reasoning behind the two incidents could not be more different. The first time was in a misguided effort to stop Clementine from inadvertently showing any allegiance to her gang. The second time was to stop her from inadvertently showing any allegiance to her gender.

You can see the problem here, right? Because while she never actually belonged to any gang, and could quit one if she did, there’s really nothing that she can do about being a girl. At least not non-surgically.

The bottom line is that school dress codes, as they are written concerning “revealing clothing,” are completely and utterly sexist. Always. Not “usually,” not “often” and not “possibly” sexist, but always sexist. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you heard of a boy being dress-coded for wearing revealing clothing? (And don’t give me that “What about the ban on saggy pants?” because since part of that fashion is to have your underwear showing, nothing is revealed. That’s a ban on clothing that is either gang-related or unprofessional, not one that is based on showing too much skin. Because if showing too much crack was really the problem then no school in America would ever be able to hire a plumber.)

The other way you know it’s sexist is because the ban on girls revealing reveal “too much skin” is always followed up with the complaint that by doing so they are causing a distraction to their male peers. “If you wear that skirt, the boys won’t be able to pay attention.” For the sake of my word count we’re just going to ignore how that statement is not only sexist, but hetero-normative. But we’re not going to ignore how it makes it clear that a boy’s right to an education trumps a girl’s.

Here’s an idea: perhaps the next time a boy is distracted by a girl’s arms (or, depending on the culture, her hair, feet, face or existence), instead of the school removing the girl from the classroom (and privileging the boy’s right to an education above the girl’s), maybe the school should take this teachable moment for what it is and actually teach the students that we all have the right to an education, just as we all have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

Who knows? Maybe if schools started teaching this lesson now then the next generation will be able to focus on real issues in the classroom (like, I dunno, math and history and all that good stuff), and we’ll all be smarter and happier for it.

No matter how distractingly nice our arms may be.

I know that I have written about this before, but it bears repeating: I have no idea how my son, Clyde, wears the shoes that he does. Fit, it would seem, is completely optional. Of course, so is color, style, appropriateness for weather and physical activity—but all of those issues pale in comparison to the fact that the shoes he wears almost never, ever fit him.

I was reminded of this yet again when I took him to buy a pair of shoes for one of his dance classes the other day. Using the size of the shoes he was currently wearing as a guide, I told the woman at the dance studio what size I thought Clyde was; she handed him a pair of shoes to try on while she and I talked over more important matters, like how a thin little pair of shoes could cost so much money. So we didn’t get to see Clyde putting the shoe on his foot. We did, however, get to see him peel his foot back out of it after she had felt Clyde’s toes to check the fit and noticed that the shoe was so tight his toes had practically curled under his foot like some kind of 19th century Chinese concubine. As he peeled the sausage casing/shoe off of his foot, and as the foot itself unrolled between us like some monstrous tongue, both the woman trying to fit him with new shoes and I had the same reaction. “How did you ever get that on in the first place?”

“I dunno,” was his illuminating answer.

It’s hard to be angry at him when he’s being so accommodating—he will literally put on, and wear for the next six months—any shoe you give him, without one word of complaint. It’s frustrating, though, because, all things being equal I’d kind of like to buy him shoes that fit, and it’s hard if he reacts to everything from a size five to a size nine the same way. “Maybe it’s a little tight.”

When I was little there were still some shoe stores that had those old machines that would x-ray your feet to see how well your shoe fit. I never used them (I remember my mom putting the kibosh on that idea), so I don’t know if they actually worked, but shoe shopping with Clyde is starting to make me wish that they were still around.

It’s not that I don’t understand Clyde’s hatred of shopping. I totally get doing anything possible to get out of trying on new clothes. (In fact, when the New World Order arrives and we each get issued our own personal clone, I’m not going to use mine for spare kidneys and corneas—I’m going to make mine go clothes shopping for me. Although, after spending a few years doing that my clone might wish I’d gone the organ donor route instead.)

And yet, even I don’t have a problem with shoe shopping. Well, not as much of a problem. So I really don’t understand his reluctance to get a pair of shoes that actually fit.

It’d be a little different if we had someone to pass the outgrown shoes down to, but even though Clyde’s “big” sister is now both four inches shorter as well as four shoe sizes smaller, I doubt that she will be growing into Clyde’s cast offs any time soon. Not that she could take them if she did, because one of the most obvious downsides to wearing shoes that don’t fit is that you wear them out quicker when you can only fit half your foot in them.

The upside being, of course, that when they do wear out, you don’t really care. After all, it wasn’t like they fit in the first place.

As the youngest child in my family, I can attest to the fact that there are a lot of problems with growing up the youngest. The best lies have all been taken. Your parents already know what day the report cards come in the mail. The only extracurricular activities open to you are the ones your older siblings have already outgrown the equipment for, unless they didn’t do it long enough to actually get the equipment, and then in that case the answer is a flat out “no.” Why? “Because your (sister/brother) tried that once and quit, and no way am I wasting all that money again.”

Of course, there are also a lot of benefits to growing up the youngest. All of the good lies may have been taken, but you don’t really need the good lies, because, depending on the number of siblings ahead of you, your parents have probably relaxed/been worn out to the point where they are only asking for your excuse as a token gesture anyway. It’s a ritual, the same way a lodge member in a town of 200 will still ask his fellow lodge member to participate in call and response—although instead of replying to “The sun always rises in the East,” with “But the shadows stretch to the West;” with parents and children it’s more likely to be “Where were you all night?” and “The Abstinence Club meeting ran late.”

I’d like to think that this is a two-way street: just as parents seem to hold older children accountable to a higher standard, so too do those same children hold their parents accountable, with the reverse being true for the younger set. Yes, parents expect the older siblings to be home by curfew, but older siblings also expect parents to be home before the crack of dawn as well. It goes both ways.

This became abundantly apparent to me the other night, when my son Clyde (the youngest) got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. I happened to be sitting on the couch, writing. On the couch with me was a blanket that circumstances led me to believe had been taken outside earlier by my daughter, Clementine. Those circumstances were that it was now moderately crawling with caterpillars.

I say “moderately” because in the course of the previous twenty minutes no less than three caterpillars had crawled across my laptop screen. Three isn’t really a lot, especially for caterpillars (three black widow spiders would have been another story), but it was more than the maximum number of caterpillars I like to keep on my body at all times. About three more, to be precise. I was trying to decide whether or not that was enough caterpillars to make it was worth my time to get up, take the blanket outside, and shake it off when Clyde found me. Always of the opinion that it is better to have more input (even if I ultimately choose to ignore all of it), I decided to tell Clyde about my current caterpillar problem, and see what he thought.

“Hey Clyde,” I said, “there’s caterpillars crawling all over me.”

He didn’t bat an eye. “Mmm hmm,” he said. And then added, almost as an afterthought, “Are you high?”

“No,” I spluttered. “Of course not.”

He nodded his head. “Then you should probably get them off of you.”

That was it. No judgement, no offers to conduct an intervention, just a simple request for the facts. And when I denied being in an altered state, there was no disbelief, either. Just some sage advice.

Yeah, when it comes to being the youngest, maybe the best lies have all been taken because you don’t really need them anymore anyway.

There is a scene in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover where, in order to hide from the bad guy (the Thief), the Cook hides the Wife and her Lover inside a meat truck that has been parked behind his restaurant for a week. A meat truck that has been parked behind his restaurant for a week with the engine turned off. A meat truck that has been parked behind his restaurant for a week with the engine turned off and no working refrigeration. It is, quite frankly, a horrifying scene, one of those scenes that make you glad that Smell-O-Vision never really caught on. It is also a scene that, unfortunately, I got to experience first hand just this last week.

Well, I didn’t get to experience the part with the Thief. Or his Wife and her Lover. But I am a Cook, and I did have a vehicle full of rotting meat parked in front of my house. Unlike the Cook in the movie, however, I was blissfully ignorant the whole time. Or, at least I was, until I opened my car door and got in.

Here’s what happened. I went to the store. I came home from the store. I asked my son, Clyde, to pause his game long enough to bring in the groceries and put them away. You can guess the rest, although it might help to know that in the summer I drive my car as little as possible, and so my car sat in front of my house, in the sun, for two whole days before I finally got in and noticed that something smelled very wrong not only in Denmark but in all other places as well.

When I (rightfully so, I felt) chastised Clyde about his lapse in, well, everything his reaction was much less apologetic than I had hoped for. In fact, it was decidedly none apologetic. His exact words were, “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

After I had finished goggling at him for that statement I managed to sputter out that I knew he hadn’t done it on purpose, that if I had suspected for a moment that he had done it on purpose I would be on the phone right now, trying to to have him committed, and that the point wasn’t whether or not he had done it on purpose but whether or not he had tried not to do it. On purpose.

He just responded by looking at me blankly. And sulking when I told him that no, we would not be having tacos tonight after all. I responded by sighing, and by trying to explain again what I had meant.

If we were even a slightly spiritual family I would have talked to Clyde about the importance of mindfulness, the importance of being present in every moment, how vital it is to Be Here Now. I would have talked about how doing good is a conscious choice; how it is more than “not being bad,” but rather the act of consciously living a life of good. Instead, I repeated what I had said before, but added in that living your life is like driving a car—just because you take your hands off of the wheel doesn’t make you any less responsible for where the car goes.

He, of course, muttered something about why I have to make such a big deal about everything, but as he stormed away I think I caught a spark of recognition there, and left it at that. It hasn’t come easily to me, but finally, after nearly two decades of parenting, I can let go of the need to have them crouch at my feet and offer up, “You were right, I was wrong.”

Sometimes.

But we still didn’t have tacos that night.