I am a terrible parent. I’m sure many of you feel the same way. Not that I (me) am a terrible parent, but that you are a terrible parent.
Not that I’m calling you a terrible
Parent; I hardly know you.
Sorry, that was confusing. Let’s reset.
I sometimes feel like I’m a terrible parent. Like I didn’t teach the right life lessons. Such as: The dresser-like object in your room has these things called “drawers” and (here’s the tricky part) if you pull on them they open up and provide space for clothing items that are currently draped across the chairs, lamps and slow moving pets in your room.
Here’s another one. Be patient, this is longer.
The background: My teen’s mother and I divorced a while ago, I think it was 1962. We share custody of our two “kids”. A few nights ago, my wife and I were snoozing in an otherwise empty house – she has two kids of her own, so between us we have four dependents … uh, children, and they all were with their other parents that night.
Around 12:45am I heard a buzzing coming from my wife’s side of the bed. It’s not what you think; get your minds out of the gutter. It was her cell phone. The incessant buzzing was our alarm company reporting someone had broken into our house through the garage entrance. Then we heard them – footsteps in our kitchen, located directly underneath our bedroom. My wife was in the closet with her phone; I was at the top of the stairs pondering whether I should call out or remain silent. The next sequence of events was right out of a TV movie:
Note: The following dialogue is uttered in hushed tones:
Wife: I hear footsteps!
Me: I do too!
Wife: Should I call the police?
Me: Yes!
(Slight pause)
Wife: Should I call the police?
Me: YES!
And she did. In a matter of seconds, I saw the police lights and heard the car pulling up to our house. I did not hear any more footsteps. The officers entered the house and I heard them searching rooms, saying, “Healdsburg Police, come out with your hands up!” See, they really do say things like that.
They checked out every room, bathroom, closet and the garage, telling us to stay upstairs. Finally they said we could come down.
The two officers, very efficient, very speedy, and very kind, told us that the garage door entrance was unlocked, as was the front door. I had locked both before bed. The kitchen and back doors were still locked. I checked the alarm history and found that, yes, someone entered though the garage at 12:38 and someone left through the front door at 12:41.
So what happened? A thief came in, couldn’t find anything to steal (very believable in our house) and fled? A thief broke in, was hungry, made a quick sandwich in kitchen and fled? A clever raccoon jimmied the door open, scampered into the kitchen raided our garbage, and fled? Or…
“Do your kids have keys to the house?” asked one officer.
“Uh, yes,” I replied.
“Could one of them have come over?”
“Well, no,” I said, “they’re all at their other houses and it’s almost 1 a.m. on a school night.”
I know, it sounded ridiculous the moment I said it.
“You want to call just to make sure?”
I picked up my phone and saw it: a text from my aforementioned teen son, sent at 12:30am: “can’t sleep coming over to get melatonin”
Then a few minutes later: “sorry about the locks, key wasn’t working”
I felt foolish, peeved, and relieved all at once. The officers were very kind in that they kept their inevitable snickering to themselves, at least until they reached their patrol car.
The next morning I realized I neglected a key parenting duty – being painfully specific about things you think you really shouldn’t need to spell out, such as: Please don’t break into our house in the middle of the night. If you absolutely have to come over, please call on the landline first so you don’t scare the s _ _ _ out of us. And you can buy melatonin at Safeway. By the way, your key does work, you just have to turn it ALL THE WAY.
So, lesson learned. The parental teaching moments are never ever done and you can take nothing for granted, such as: collusion doesn’t really mean collusion, obstruction of justice doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means, and bullies actually do win sometimes.
In the words of Crosby Stills, Nash and (maybe) Young, I will try to teach my children well.
Or at least good.
