The best Super Bowl TV commercial of all time features some cowboys riding their horses out on the range . . . herding cats. While we’re supposed to believe that this is impossible, most parents understand the frustration.
Raising kids is a LOT like the TV ad, but usually without the horses. Miss Crankypants knows personally that motherhood is a proposition requiring lots of time on the range–the kitchen range. When moms aren’t feeding their offspring, they’re trying to convince them not to stare at strangers in public or else scrubbing bootprints and the occasional far-flung booger from the ceiling.
One of her own sons had a booger museum on the side of his dresser. Of course she didn’t know about it until he’d grown up and moved out for the (hopefully!) last time. When she was wiping down the dresser to repurpose it as a crafts center, she came across this petrified yuk, trailing down one side of said bureau. Miss CP would’ve killed son on the spot, but he’s now six foot one and has produced the cutest grandson on the planet.
Miss Cranky’s twins, on the other hand, while a total surprise on their birth day, proceeded to make chaos for the next twenty years. When they were toddlers, she tried to interest them in reading. Books, she thought, would make them into smart and talented people, capable of pulling down a 6 figure salary in their later years. So what did they do?
They took the entire set of encyclopedias, stacked them into two towers and used them to climb out the window! These escape artists also made sure they were buck naked at the time.
Miss CP’s only saving grace was that at least they weren’t like some toddler triplets she knew, who ran around without clothing on a daily basis. Rumor had it that these three little devils stuffed THEIR encyclopedias into the wood stove and created a bonfire out of Aardvarks through Zoology. Of course, kids these days have never even seen an encyclopedia, so there’s less of a fire hazard for moderns moms and dads.
You may be wondering what a herd of cats has to do with raising kids. YOU try scraping a decade of boogers off a dresser. Trust me, like your kids, the cats won’t lift a finger to help.