Illustration by Jan Igoe
As a survivor of post-WWII parents, I will always remember the feel of hairbrush bristles stinging my bottom and the thrill of dodging incoming projectiles whenever Mom exceeded her brat quota for the day. My own kids, especially the feral one, had it much easier.
Armed only with wussy timeouts—the next generation’s idea of parental waterboarding—I was left to battle my tempestuous second-born, who could outsmart most adults by the time she was 2. Her older sister was more like a collectible doll than a human infant. She was the perfect baby who cried rarely, smiled all the time and was so Zen-like, she practically pooped sunshine.
That’s the way nature tricks you into keeping the species going. When your first kid is a saint, you go back for seconds.
But next time, you might get a fire-breathing Tasmanian devil who was born to defy your toothless timeouts. That’s when you start wishing your parents’ antiquated methods were still legal. Most of my mom’s specialties have gone out of style, but they were certainly classics:
‘I’m going to count to three.’
This threat probably explains my generation’s high incidence of math anxiety. The subliminal message was that we wouldn’t live long enough to hear “four” unless we stopped whatever felony was in progress. Perhaps that was the highest Mom could count, but I’ll never know, what with running for my life at two-and-a-half.
‘Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about.’
When a child cries, tantrums notwithstanding, it’s safe to assume she’s upset about something that’s as real as a root canal in her tiny world. But rather than consider the trigger—be it the tragic demise of a gerbil, a national cupcake shortage or a big brother who kidnapped Elsa and Anna for target practice, mothers would instinctively respond with an ambiguous threat that meant nuclear war to a toddler.
Of course, the thinking was flawed. Why not let a child who is already crying just keep going, if that’s the goal? Not a chance. The prevailing parenting advice was to disrupt the cry in progress and threaten to initiate a new one, which only increased the volume, ferocity and duration of the wailing. Go figure.
‘You’ll be dining in the laundry room.’
If you made Mom’s persona non grata list, your dinner would be served on the washing machine beside piles of dirty clothes. She wouldn’t deny us food, but we’d have to eat it standing up at Café Whirlpool.
‘Just wait till your father gets home.’
This was my personal favorite, since Mom did all the roof-raising and Dad did what he was told. We all knew he was a plant-eating pacifist, but Mom would banish us to our rooms to wait for this fearsome alpha predator to dole out justice.
After a long day at work, the only thing my father wanted to hit was a bottle of Miller High Life, but she’d sic him on us the moment he trudged through the door. So we’d all go through the motions for Mom’s sake. “Yell louder,” he’d urge behind the bedroom door. “Make your mother happy, so I can eat dinner.” Apparently, she never heard us giggling.
My kids probably don’t remember timeouts, but I can still hear my mom bellowing ultimatums. Even now, decades later, I only buy hairbrushes with soft bristles.
EDITOR’S NOTE: South Carolina Living is reprinting some of Jan A. Igoe’s previous columns. This “Humor Me” originally appeared in the September 2017 issue. Visit SCLiving.coop/news/in-memory-of-jan-igoe.