A Pilgrim’s Digression

Today, I’ve been thinking about how when we become parents, a lot of us enter into that responsibility believing the dictum: “I won’t be like my parents.” And soon enough, we find ourselves doing exactly what our parents did.

I’ll never forget the discomfort I felt the first time I heard the words “Because I said so” cross my lips. Yet there comes a point in every parents’ life when you have heard that whiny little “Why?” one too many times. And how many young parents have swore that they would never spank their child, yet when the boy throws his first tantrum, their first impulse is to swat him on the bum?

In order to help us modern folks feel better about our parenting, following is a list for which I don’t exactly have a proper title. Maybe I can just call it, “Things our parents did that we will never, ever do.”

These are genuine parenting practices of a bygone age that no modern parent will ever resort to. Since I was a child of the seventies and eighties, most of these items will be particular to that era—and maybe to my own family. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.

1. If the baby is teething or colicky, we will not “put a little whiskey on his gums.”
2. Blowing cigarette smoke in your daughter’s ear will probably not cure her ear infection.
3. While a vehicle is in motion, we will not allow our child to ride on someone’s lap, ride in the back of a pick-up truck, straddle the center console, lounge on the rear window shelf, or help shift the car’s gears or otherwise operate the vehicle. “OK, now push the clutch in, Johnny. Now Johnny!” is not an example of proper father/son bonding when the kid is five years old.
4. Routinely saying to your child, “Honey, run and get my cigarettes from the bedroom,” is not encouraging your child to get some exercise.
5. At a party, acceptable forms of entertainment do not include giving your three year old beer and watching him stagger around drunk. If there had been video cameras around in the seventies, there are members of my family who would have found themselves on the front page of the Enquirer (the Seventies equivalent of The Smoking Gun), having been arrested for child abuse.
6. A .22 rifle or a 4.10 shotgun is not a proper Christmas present for a six-year-old. I still marvel when I think about how I was allowed to attempt to kill small animals for sport at my son’s present age of seven.
7. We will never shout “Run, you little son of a bitch! Get the lead out of your ass!” at our own child, or someone else’s child, during a pee wee sporting event.
8. Pepsi at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between times is probably not healthy for adults or children. Putting Pepsi in the baby’s bottle is a definite no-no.
9. Encouraging your grade-school age child to try chewing tobacco is not a deterrent to using tobacco. Laughing uproariously with your friends when the child immediately turns green and projectile vomits probably does not improve the level of trust you have with your offspring. My Grandpa did this to me, giving me a plug of his favorite tobacco, “Happy Jim.” It smelled good; then I put it in my mouth. I was not made any happier.
10. Finally, when our daughter comes to us with an asphalt burn from wrecking her bike (no elbow pads or helmet, of course), we will never say, “Oh, she’ll be alright. Just put some mercurochrome on it!”