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Parents don’t have a clue

By Rick Ryckeley
Contributing Writer

As I sit here trying to slug through another article, I hear a loud boom thundering from above. It’s not one of those late-afternoon summertime thunderstorms that seem to come rolling in without warning just to ruin your golf game. It’s not the wrath of God for all those things yours truly has done in the past that no one’s found out about. It’s just The Boy up in his room, doing something he shouldn’t.

Suddenly it dawns on me that parents nowadays don’t have a clue as to what their kids do, which is kind of disconcerting being a father of a kid myself. But this article isn’t about The Boy, leastwise not yet. (He’s still up in his room still making noise, and I really don’t want to investigate.) Rather, this article is about some of the stuff we did and got away with that our parents never found out about. Or did they?

For instance, my dad never knew that it was twin brother Mark’s idea to use the laundry hamper as a sleigh. We took turns climbing in it and sliding down the steps from the first floor to the basement. We tried sliding down the steps on the second floor, but the carpet slowed us down. Being only wood, the basement steps let us slide down fast - REALLY FAST.

Dad never found out it was me who went crashing through the basement door when Mark gave too big of a push at the top of the steps. Soon after my unfortunate incident with the basement door, Dad had a special job for Mark and me: mowing our grass for an entire month all by ourselves. He said it was the perfect way to build up our legs for the upcoming football season at Cripple Creek Middle School. We were gonna be Fighting Ducks. Looking back, I think one of my brothers ratted me out. Probably Mark.

When we all attended Briarwood High School, home of the mighty Buccaneers, big brother James said that no one would find out it was us four boys who rolled the cheerleaders’ yard the night before homecoming. We gathered up all the toilet paper in the house Thursday night, snuck out, rolled the two cheerleaders’ houses down the street, and then snuck back in. No one ever found out it was us. We won Homecoming Friday night, but the whole next week coach Muscledine made us boys run laps after ever one else had gone home. Mom, for some reason, made sure there wasn’t toilet paper in our bathroom for a month after that.

Mom never knew when she sent us to pick berries for cobbler that we’d actually picked three quarts instead of one. We picked one quart for the cobbler that night and ate two quarts on the way back to the house. We never finished dinner on cobbler night or even one bite of cobbler. Cold cobbler made for one tasty breakfast though. Come to think of it, Mom never used more than one quart of berries to make her cobblers. Wonder why she always told us to pick three?

It was Big Brother James who brought the small surgical tubing home, Older Brother Richard who thought it was a good idea to make a giant slingshot out of it by adding a leather pocket, and Mark and me who filled up the water balloons and shot them down the street at Old Miss Crabtree’s house, but I think it was The Sister who ratted us out. Richard and James held each end of the giant sling shot while we took turns trying to hit Miss Crabtree’s house, which we never did. Hit her mail box a bunch of times, but never made it to her house. The next day our giant slingshot was gone, and we never found it. Wonder why.

To sum up: The things we thought we got away with when we were young were the same things our parents did when they were kids and that our children are currently doing. Years from now their kids will do the same things, thinking that no one will ever find out. This explains why my parents seemed to always know everything we did, sometimes even before we did it.

CRASH!! Another thunderous boom rolls down the steps from The Boy’s room. This time followed by a quiet “Uh oh.” Guess I need to investigate what The Boy’s up to. I think I saw him creep upstairs with some surgical tubing. He didn’t find our giant slingshot. Or did he?