Three Things I Never Thought I'd Have to Do as a Parent

Being a parent is hard. Even if you go into it, expecting it to be hard... it's harder than you ever imagined.

Oh sure, there's joys and rewards and in the end, you wouldn't trade it for anything, blah, blah, blah.

But there are some things you end up doing, as a parent, that you never, ever, EVER, thought you would have to do.

For instance:

1. Make your kid apologize to a neighbor for having dumped a bag of paper shreddings in their yard.

When Sissa was about 14 or so she had a friend over to spend the night. The next morning, there's a knock on our door and I find two cops standing there, with some paper shreddings in their hand. Apparently, she and her friend (who was moving away in a few weeks) wanted to do one last "epic" (her word) thing together and decided that sneaking out in the middle of the night to empty a bag of shredded paper she had found in my office, all over the neighbor's front yard, was just the parting exploit they needed.

How did the cops know the shreddings came from our house, you ask? They pieced some strips together and our address materialized before their eyes. FYI - shredding doesn't protect your personal information. At least not with teenagers in the house.


2.  Release a bunch of mice in an empty desert lot behind a Pet Smart.

I might get in trouble with PETA for this one, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Before we moved into our big house (the one where some kids broke in and had a rave. I'm thinking, Karma.), we we're living in a small rental house. For some reason that I don't remember (I'm sure some begging was involved) we agreed to buy a mouse who we named Harvey.

Harvey was fine alone, but for some reason we acquired two more mice, which were female. I think you see where this is going. 

We kept the female mice in a separate cage and the kids were under strict orders to not let them mingle. (Right about now, Fred is laughing hysterically at the words "strict orders".) 

Apparently, the kids threw a little mouse party in the empty bathtub and allowed the furry nymphos to frolic together. We all know what happens at mouse parties where booze and boy-girl shenanigans are allowed. Mouse babies. Lots. and lots. of mouse babies.

We gave some to Pet Smart and kept some for a while. But mice are stinky, even with regular cage-cleanings. When we bought our new house I was determined the mice would not be moving with us. 

We tried to give them to Pet Smart again, but this time they said they had too many mice already and wouldn't take them. 

So...somewhere in an empty lot behind a Pet Smart are a bunch of homeless mice, drinking Schlitz Malt Liquor and reminiscing about the orgy they once all had in a bathtub.

3.  Pick up your teenage daughter from a school yard in the middle of the night.

    

Yeah, it's the same daughter mentioned earlier. She was - I don't know...in her teens - and had spent the night at a friend's house (a different friend) and the two of them and the friend's brother decided it would be fun to sneak out and go hang out in a nearby school yard. I'm sure the word "epic" was used.

The school police were patrolling the area and saw them and called us. They had tried to bring the kids back to the friend's house, but after banging on the door several times and ringing the doorbell, couldn't wake up the friend's parents. !!!!???

When Fred went to pick her up, he asked the police what the kids were doing when the police caught them. The cop chuckled and said, "Playing Duck Duck Goose."

I guess it could have been worse.

This list could go on, but really each of the things I thought I would never have to do as a parent, is a blog post all on its own. So I'm stopping at these three. Most things, over time, become a funny story even if they weren't funny at all at the time. Of course, there are also the things that are never funny. The things that keep you awake at night when you look back on them and are too hard and too personal to write about...

But this post isn't about those things. It's about the stuff that's funny later. I saw this on Facebook the other day and thought it sums up being a parent pretty good:

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms, or dads who are also moms. May all your bad parenting moments become funny anecdotes later and not actually screw up your kids.

How about you guys? Do you have any things you never thought you would have to do as a parent?

Nostalgically,

Lori

This post was brought to you by Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop and her prompt: write a list of things you never thought you would do when you became a parent.

Credit for wide-eyed parent photo: Pixabay