Do-Bees and Don't-Bees: Rules Our Parents Made Up

EttaRose's Humor Bloggers comedy carnival had asked posters to talk about two topics, one of which was "Rules Our Parents Made Up."

While I've already entered a different post for the Carnival, I thought I'd also try to more directly address the topic here. For one, because I'm the kind of giant nerd who actually enjoys playing by the rules...

And also because I couldn't think of anything else to post for today.


My parents liked rules. With the amount of rules I had growing up in the 70s and early 80s, you'd think there were unruly tribes of Saxons, Celts, Huns and Goths duking it out in our livingroom on a regular basis....

Sweeping in wearing blue face paint... brandishing broadswords... and slinging morning stars... with only the "Don't" list to keep them from wiping out the home furnishings.

Alas, it was just me, and I rarely wore the face paint.

But, yes, the rules were what kept my home separated from chaos. Or, like, a social life. But the rules during this time took two forms. Spoken Rules, and Unspoken Rules. I'll go with the spoken ones first.


SPOKEN RULES
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The Two Bite Rule. New foods were automatically given the two-bite rule. You dish yourself a very small amount of it, you take two bites of it, see how you like it. And if you don't like it, you don't have to eat any more of it.

Until, of course, Mom tries to sneak it into your meals in some other way later, to trick you into eating it. Because you might just only think you don't like it, but you probably do. Yes, you do. Really. You do. No, really. Just eat it.

Bedtime is Not Subject to Advanced Inter-party Negotiation. I learned this straight off. Bedtime was bedtime. Try as I might, amendments to policy were not to be made "Just for this one Magnum P.I. episode which ran late because Jimmy Carter got chatty in his State of the Union address."

Or "Only to see how Ricardo Montalban cracks down the Lei-trimmed hammer of poetic justice on Fantasy Island this week."

Bedtime was bedtime. Period. No sneaky glasses of water as a stall tactic, either. Go to sleep.


Homework First. Godzilla After. Ah, I think I can attribute my good grades largely to this rule. See, Godzilla was often on the "4 o'clock Movie" on WWOR-TV. And if it wasn't Godzilla, it was Planet of the Apes. Or giant ants stomping a city. Or War of the Worlds.

Basically I was guaranteed something large and scaly would be trying to crush Life as We Know It. Which any kid knows, is seriously cool. So, this was well-worth investing time in stupid things like homework, and studying, in order to see.

I bet much of the New Jersey educational system had a strong foundation in Godzilla. I don't think studies have been done, but perhaps they should have.


Children Are to be Seen and Not Heard. Yes, Dad was kickin' it Old School. It was a favorite phrase.

But what I've come to learn as an adult is, that Dad just really likes to talk, and gets a runaway train-like momentum going. You don't even have to really interact with him, as long as you're physically in the room and you nod sometimes.

In fact, he's been known to lecture on a topic for up to 3 hours straight without real input from the other parties in the room. Or water. Or oxygen. (I use this time to catch up on magazines.) So this is less of an ageist thing than I'd ever realized. The Pop just really enjoys an audience.


Thou Shalt Practice Piano a Half Hour Every Day. Now, to the adult brain, a half hour is nothing. It's a quick lunch break. A conference call. How long it takes to figure out how Entrecard works.

But to a kid brain? A half hour could hold... oh, a fist full of jellybeans, three Underdog cartoons, jigsaw puzzle sorting, jump-roping, a game of jacks, a costume change for Barbie, destruction of the Death Star, and two elaborate blueprints for a Secret Clubhouse. That's a LOT of fun things that don't involve Beethoven.


UNSPOKEN RULES
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My parents also had a lot of unspoken rules, that became more apparent to me the longer I hung out with them. I thought I might share just a few of them here today.


Don't Ever Not Know Where You Are. My dad had this habit of, if we were out somewhere in the car, announcing:

"I don't know where we are, Jenn. We're lost! Do you know where we are? You have to get us home!"

Of course, I was, like, seven at the time, and could get lost playing "Pin the Tail on the Donkey."

I didn't know geography. Because I lived in a town called Dover, I thought the mountain across the street was the White Cliffs. (No really, I did.)

Dad, of course- in the perverse way of teasing family members-- thought my panic about logistics to be huge blockbuster entertainment.

He'd say, "Jenn, we're counting on you to navigate us home!" And there'd be me crying and thinking I was never going to see my stuffed animals, again because I'd failed to be the family Magellan.

Family can be a riot sometimes, can't they?

Nowadays, of course, a kid in the same position could just say, "What-- you don't know how to work the GPS, Pop?" But it was a tougher existence in the 70s and 80s. Let's call it character-building.

So now, when Dad visits me and I'm driving him around obscure sections of Pittsburgh, I enjoy asking him, "Dad, where are we? Do YOU know where we are? You have to get us home."

I've since received an apology for my childhood, by the way. You can't buy that sort of therapy.


Never Lie About Anything You Can't 100% Get Away With. Somewhere along the way, my mother had convinced me she could read my mind. Though, mostly, it was just because whatever I was thinking was written in scented-markers all over my face.

My cousin Sauce has the same issue. Maybe it's hereditary. But anything we think, you can pretty much read in our expressions. This is what makes us a hazard in poker games and client meetings...

This is why neither of us will be starting a career in politics.

Anyway, Mom could always tell whenever I was lying, so eventually, I gave it up entirely unless under extreme circumstances. Like grades.

My mother also belonged to the Inter-District Mom Grapevine Network. It was an early form of an online chatroom, only Real World and involving things like PTA meetings, parent teacher conferences and giving the Spanish Inquisition to my friends' mothers.

Through this Network, rumor, theory and information were collected and distributed amongst the parents. Nowadays, it'd be in database format with password protection.


So tell me, folks-- did you have any similar rules? What were the big "Beware, All Ye Who Enter Here" topics in your household growing up?

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