Voices In My Head - Boundaries
Posted on June 14, 2008
My oldest daughter is just four years old. Even though she can't legally drive where we live for another twelve and a half years she's already telling me what color car she wants. I can feel her pain and anxiety. I used to hate the fact that we have age limits on things like driving a car, voting for president or drinking alcohol.
Now that I'm an adult I see things much differently. Not only do I agree that there needs to be age restrictions on driving a car or drinking alcohol but also on a host of additional actions. As far as voting for president, Im pretty sure thats fixed anyway so why not let anyone who can push a button cast their vote?
Some things however need boundaries. Therefore my wife and I have set out to assign age boundaries to many of our kids requests. For example, nobody under the age of twelve is allowed within ten feet of a piano. If banging on the keys like a chimpanzee were outlawed the world would be a better place. Not to mention dozens of people could avoid some pretty nasty headaches right around Christmas time. Theres nothing cute about being off key. As Johnnie Cochran might have once said: If you cant play, stay away.
It seems every time I turn around I see the kids with pierced ears getting younger and younger. The rule in my house is that when our kids are old enough to accurately pronounce and spell the word anesthesia they can get earrings. I dont see that happening for a couple more years.
When my wife and I were dating we often went camping. Now we own a home of our own and dont need to sleep out in the woods with the raccoons, bears, skunks, deer ticks and other forms of wildlife that seem offended when I enter their turf. Thus an age boundary was applied to our kids request to go camping. The next time Haleys Comet comes around we promised to take the kids out into the woods and spend the night in a tent. Luckily for us Haleys comet isnt due to pass Earth again until 2062. (We may have forgotten to tell our kids that).
Every year around this time a group of us go and see Jimmy Buffett. The concert is not the main attraction but rather the four hour party out in the parking lot prior to Jimmy arriving. We know what these things are like so weve already prepared our answer for when some boy wants to take one of our girls to a concert. When our girls are old enough to become president of the United States they can go to a concert without parental supervision. We figure by the time theyre thirty five they should know the difference between Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now.
Some people think that rules like these arent enforceable and that the kids will just do as they please. Not quite. The trick is to have all these rules written up and ready for your kids by the time they learn to sign their name. Then what you do is call a Notary Public and have them sign their Childrens Bill of Rights in front of a witness.
Of course youll need to have stipulations in your Childrens Bill of Rights as to what the penalty will be if and when any of the above laws are broken. We like to keep it simple so each law is assigned a monetary fine. If the child cant afford to pay us cash at the time of the offense then the amount of the fee is deducted from what we plan to pay for their first car.
My name is Artie Leary. I am a humor columnist based out of a small New England town. You may not have heard of me before so let me introduce myself by telling you four things about me that you probably couldn't guess.
My parents wanted a girl when I was born and they were going to name her Stephanie. This lovely little anecdote is told by my dear old mother annually at my birthday party.
When I was seven years old I stole a zucchini from Mr. Chalke's garden and brought it home to my parents for dinner. It was that night as I cried myself to sleep after my dad slapped me on the head and called me an idiot that I decided I didn't have what it takes for a life of crime.
I cut my own hair and shave my own back and it isn't easy.
I once told my Great Aunt Alice who was suffering from Alzheimer's that my name was Charlie Manson and she was part of my "family". My mother grounded me for two weeks for that "misunderstanding".
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