I live with 4.75 teenagers. These were once my babies and now are unique creatures who often resemble fragrant, helpful allies and other days pose as smelly, ungrateful strangers.
Like dependent joeys, they once hovered around me for transportation, food and internet passwords. Now some of them drive cars, buy their own chips and stop whispering when I walk into a room.
“What did you say? Who’s doing what?” I plead like a pitiful toddler. Life has cruelly circled around — I am now the one who craves to be let in on secrets and it is I who must take naps.
One of my teenagers currently displays an unusual, robotic sense of humor — like when he greets me at breakfast by pointing sharply at me and saying:
Target Acquired.
We discussed respect / disrespect today. Sometimes I ask him to complete a chore and he jokingly answers:
Yes, I will not do that.
When I was finished with my mini respect lecture, he offered me a rigid handshake, peered at me with a robotic stare and stated in a monotone:
Thank you for your candor.
Minutes later, he offered me another stiff hand and droned:
Congratulations. You have been reinstated as our mother for another five years.
We had some other options, but this worked for us right now.
After eating the lunch I prepared for him, he approached me again with:
Congratulations. Your term as mother has now been extended for the next TEN years.
Unless you perish.
Time for a nap.
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