This was inspired by Persephone’s thread on kid weirdness.
All us parents have said things to our kids that made perfect sense at the time, but are just bizarre things to say. In fact, my wife and I often catch ourselves and exclaim, “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said that!” or “eighteen years ago I wouldn’t have said that!” (Our children are nine and seventeen, so do the math)
A modest sampling of things we’ve actually caught ourselves saying:
“Don’t draw on your cracker.”
“She can play with the dishwasher because she’s got oil on her head.”
“Cats are NOT pillows!” My mom said this routinely to my sister and I because we had a black longhair persian/siamese mix growing up and my sister and I treated it like a pillow.We’d grab the cat and lay down on the floor with our head on the kitty’s abdomen.
“Stop giving your brother swirlies.It makes his asthma react.”
“Here’s ten bucks.Now go cross the highway and get a couple of Happy Meals.”
I once walked past my father, who was reading a newspaper, and he said “mm-hmm.”
Obviously, he’s taped into something of the blank void psyche, or he’s too absorbed in that piece of paper to care about even thinking about a proper reply to any sort of question, while he still understands the newspaper.
My kids and I have a lot of different things that have become stock phrases and in-jokes:
*“That was nice Rachel. So Graceful… like a swan… (pause) in a high wind” *
Just about any statement followed by “or die trying.”
"Just eat your dinner! (pause) or die trying!"
“Put your lego away (pause) or die trying!”*
it works with just about anything. the more remote the likelihood of death actually occuring, the better.
“Do not bite the doorknob. We don’t do that in this family.”
she wasn’t actually trying to bite the doorknob, just using the convex reflection to look at something in her mouth…
In my weirder moments, Rachel is apt to tell me that I am retarded. at which point I will effect a slow-of-mind speech pattern and point out that
“I can poke you in the eye.”
for some reason this has become the pinnacle of our family humour.
when they were really young I would rotate through a number of different character when it came to bedtime: Zombie-dad, Franken-Dad, Count von Dad, WereDad and any number of ethnic stereotype-dads.
“Because there wasn’t any… colour only came about when your mom was a baby”.
I can support this assertion by showing them their mom’s baby pics (in colour) and mine (in B&W).
This is just as shocking to them as having a world without videos or nintendo… because back when we were kids there wasn’t anything like that, we were happy to have dirt because there were kids who’s parents couldn’t even afford dirt.
“Because underwear goes under your pants. I don’t know why, they just do.”-- to my son’s repeated questioning of why did he have to wear underwear.
“You can change your name to Justinia when you’re 18.”-- to my son Justin when he was 6 and “No, I really don’t think EbonyM is a cool first name.” – to my daughter Ebony when she was about 10.
“No, you do not have to be married to make a baby. They make them in test tubes now.”
“Ooooh, I know! Let’s play No Body Talk for 15 minutes.”
“No blow! I’m trying to pee!”
“OK. You sit on Daddy’s head and you sit on Mommy’s head.”
Echo said to our youngest (who was about 2 or 3 at the time)–“Go away, Vamoose”. He was on a ladder changing a light bulb and she was underfoot and under ladder and being a general pain. I asked her to go out in the living room, she ignored me, he told her the above, she went flying out of the kitchen hollering, “You go away, Bad Moose!”. Funny how the little twerps twist things…
