Flashback to 1982

It is official... my husband and I have become my parents.

When I was a kid, I would get into trouble a lot. I don't really remember why I was getting in trouble, but I do remember my punishments. I was basically grounded from the age of 10 until I went away to college, and even then my father tried to ground me but I just laughed and went to a fraternity party and got drunk. Obviously I learned valuable lessons from all of my punishments.

Well let me tell you my dear friends... payback is a bitch!

My son has started this walk into the darkness of which I like to call "acting like an idiot." Today he did something that was so bad I could have dropped him off at the hospital and asked just how long the statute of limitations is for a person to want to give their child back.

When his father got home from work he was called down to the kitchen table where he sat with tears in his eyes while I kept asking him just what is going through his brain. As we started to lay down the law and hand out the punishment that was the exact moment when I realized that my son is the carbon copy of me... gulp!

I have always said that my son is just like his father. They look like Doctor Evil and Mini-Me so I always assumed that their behaviors would be the same. No such luck! My husband was always a "good boy" when he was younger, or maybe even a "mama's boy" but I am not going to get into that pool of dysfunction right now. ANYWAY, it became crystal clear that as my son sat looking at me with venom in his eyes and his jaw clenched tight , that he was me through and through, and that we would meet many more times at this kitchen table in the coming 8 years of his life.

How can this be? It seems like only yesterday that I was getting punished from my parents for offenses that I thought were minor but they obviously thought would be the end of the world as we all knew it. They punished me as if I were a hardened criminal man... they never cut me any slack. Sheesh!

The sad part in all of this is that I look at the behavior that my son displayed today and the mom in me thinks "He has to learn a lesson here! He has to be punished! Take away the computer, the television, the gameboy, the nintendo, the radio... food!" But the juvenile delinquent in me thinks "Cut him some slack! At least he wasn't out slashing tires and smoking behind Wal Mart."

Oh... this is going to be a long adolescence, I can tell.