FAMOUS WORDS--DOES YOUR FAMILY SAY THINGS LIKE THIS?

We're going to cancel Christmas.

This was said when the house was a mess and nobody would clean it up. Or when the kids fought. Or when they wouldn't mind. We always had Christmas.


"Maybe" always means "yes."

All I had to say was, "Maybe," and that shut them up because "maybe" really did mean "yes. " My mom's "maybe" meant "maybe." My brother-in-laws dad's "maybe" meant "no," but then he relented and it meant "yes" but by that time the damage was done.


I'm going to leave your brothers at the mall.

This was the day before cell phones. We had gone to the mall and everyone went in different directions with instructions to meet back at a certain place at a certain time. Of course Kraut and The Brown Dot did not show up on time. Or later. Or really later. Phil was fuming and told Gilmore Girl he was going home and leave her brothers at the mall. I think she cried, pleading for them. Of course Phil wasn't going to leave them but Gilmore Girl didn't know that and she has never forgotten the threat. I think she may be permanently traumatized.


If you kids don't start behaving I'm going to turn this car around.

Phil tells me I actually stopped the car and made The Brown Dot get out and walk home. I have conveniently forgotten such cruelty. It must have been two miles, tops. It contributed to his physical and my mental health. It was a good thing, I'm sure of it.


If you kids don't straighten up I'm going to leave home.

And I did. I got in the car and drove away. Once I was out of sight of the house I didn't know where to go so I went to the library. What a sissy way to rebel. They had their chores done when I got home so maybe my tantrum was worth it.


Vacuum the other half of the piano.

As a mom I was so tired of trying to get the kids to do their jobs that I was driven right to the edge and all my words meant nothing but nonsense. Kraut still remembers this one because he was the one I told to vacuum the piano.

That's it. No more "what if" questions!

My kids "What if'd" me to the edge of sanity. My sister's kids did too. The most ridiculous "what if" they ever asked my brother-in-law--he was driving the car at the time-- was: "Dad, what if there were a fire in your ear?"

It seems like all my famous last words were threats. That's what happens to parents sometimes. The good times out number the bad ones, ten fold, twenty fold, a hundred fold but it's the bad times that the kids remember. When I get to Heaven and the instant replay of my life is played it will be boring because I was a pretty mild mannered Mom. But when the maniac scenes come on my kids will clap and cheer and say things like, "Yes! That's what she did all right!" When they do that I'm going to say, "If I have to come over there...."