We ARE listening

As a kid I remember getting up on a Saturday morning and joining my dad at the kitchen table where he was drinking his morning coffee. After he would say good morning the next thing he would say to me was almost always: "go put some socks on". I never understood it, and it was often annoying to have to go all the way back up stairs and find some socks when my feet weren't even cold. Even if they were cold I was far too lazy for all that. I had just woken up. He was relentless so I would begrudgingly climb the stairs and do as I was told.

Often immediately after that I would grab a bowl and fill it with an inhuman amount of chocolate ice cream and sit in front of the tv for the next few hours to which he would say nothing. Warm feet were far more critical than nutrition and mental stimulation I guess.

The thing is, the first thing I do when I get up now (well, second really...I sure you can all imagine what the first thing is) is find my fuzzy socks and put them on. It would seem, dad, that whatever you were trying to get across worked. And that isn't the only thing that my parents tried to beat into my brain when I was a kid that has carried into my adult life.

I remember making toast and then heading straight to the family room to sit on the couch to eat it...no plate, no napkin, no nothing. Needless to say Mom was never pleased with that. "Go get a plate!" I never really understood that because often when I did have a plate it would just sit on the arm of the couch while I ate the toast anyway and the crumbs would free fall. Now, however, it is seldom that I eat anything without a catcher like a plate or a napkin. In fact, I worry about my impact on the environment with the amount of napkins I go through. I seem to be a little addicted to using them.

"Don't let her lick you in the face" my Dad would say anytime our dog Fee-Fee would try to show us some love. I never understood that one either. Why not? It is just a little lick and dog's mouths are cleaner than humans, right? Ummm, no. When was the last time you saw a human eat their own poop/vomit, lick their you-know-what, or chewed on some gnarly bit of old bone? Plus, dogs never brush their teeth and I have a hard time believing that chewing on a 'Milk Bone' really has the same effect as my Aquafresh/Reach combination.

Now, however, if I see the dogs lick my nieces I get it. I get that totally grossed out feeling that he was feeling and I freak out. "Don't let them lick you in the face" I say.

Mom always used to have a fit about turning all the lights out. I remember being three flights down and mom forcing me to turn the light off in my room. Gawd, how annoying that was...but now, if I am in the living room in my house and the light in the bathroom is on, I can't relax properly. Don't get me wrong, I pay the same money per month no matter how much energy I use so it isn't a money issue. For me it is exactly what I just said: an energy issue. I try to conserve it as best as I can. Now if I can only abandon my paper towel addiction I might be able to get to carbon neutral.

So, Mom and Dad's all around, keep being your relentless (annoying) selves because even if what you are saying seems to be falling on deaf ears, it IS getting in there. It might not be until years later that they realize where all of their strange little habits came from, but they will stop and figure it out one day.

Thanks to sound parenting, I always have warm feet, a clean face, and crumbs on my couch are non-existant. Thanks Mom and Dad.