People die that way

Every once in a while as a parent you realize these glaring holes in your teaching. Like the other day Bob came running around a corner with a heating pad trailing her; the cord wrapped neatly around her neck. And I thought holy crap did that kid brush her teeth today. Cause you know what they say about bad oral hygiene. Not really. I thought oh crap have I explained the dangers of electricity (and oh yeah wrapping things around your neck).  I don’t think I have ever explicitly said, don’t take a bath with your radio cause you already have a frizzy head that I’m unsure most days how to fix and if it gets any more frizzy, Sugar you are on your own. And when you realize you’ve left gaps in the survival traditions that we humans have passed on since we were primordial goo so that we could rise up and become the fittest of all species, you panic. On the surface you are thinking my sweet precious child could be maimed, dismembered or killed if I don’t get this right. But somewhere deep inside you get all primitive. Because I’m not just letting down my one child, I am letting down all of humanity. I am not doing my job to further the human as the fittest of all species and we’ve worked really hard for that. All of the cavemen who came before us and died from trying to plug in their heating pad without proper training will have given their lives in vain. So you go into hyper explanation mode. Trying to give all of the information about whatever aspect of basic survival you have forgotten as if the existence of the human race depends on it. By the time I was 18 my Mom had simplified this into one statement, “You have a very bright future, don’t do anything to screw it up.” Before that however she too dove into hyper explanation throwing out dramatic scenarios that she pulled from her arsenal of “I work for DHS, trust me it can really happen,” examples that generally ended in “people die that way.” So that is about where I am on the parent time line. People die that way.

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