VeraBlue
Executive Chef
Please don't let the title startle you. This is actually for Mudbug
.
We were discussing things our parents made us do, that, in our enlightened opinions amounts to child abuse.
I figured I'd toss in sibling rivalry/abuse just for 'pips' and giggles.
My mother used to make me ride my bike (without benifit of bike basket) to the supermarket to fetch groceries she had run short of. This meant I had to hold the bag (and sometimes it had big gallons of milk
) with one hand and steer with the other.
My brother was quite enterprising. He had a very large after-school paper route. There were easily a hundred and twenty five papers over 6 miles to be delivered. It also had to be done on foot because of the geography. When he was in the midst of baseball practice I had to do his route. He never permitted me to make the collections because he didn't want me getting the tips. He paid me a dollar a week. This was 1975. My parents told me I had no choice.
We had a glass shower door which my father insisted on cleaning with some product called 'Jubilee'. He would spend 2 hours cleaning this thing, getting off all the soap build up and lime...etc. We only had one bathroom, by the way. When he was finished, he would tell us no one was allowed to use the bathroom till the next day. He wanted it to stay clean for a while.
My father liked to make breakfast on sunday morning. My father also liked to get up early. It's not too bad when you're 7 or 8...but when you're 17 and were out with friends the night before, being told 'you can't eat cold eggs' at 7am is torture.
My mother insisted we 'kids' phone our grandmother to say goodnight every night. Everytime my grandmother would ask to speak to my mother, however, she'd run out of the room.
When I was 10 I traveled to Italy with my family. My sister was 6. Being only slightly more understanding of the lire than my sister, I convinced her that the bigger the size of the paper bill, the more it was worth. I got her to trade all her little bills for my big bills.
Okay.....your turn. And Mudbug, I do hope you have had a nice laugh!
.We were discussing things our parents made us do, that, in our enlightened opinions amounts to child abuse.
I figured I'd toss in sibling rivalry/abuse just for 'pips' and giggles.
My mother used to make me ride my bike (without benifit of bike basket) to the supermarket to fetch groceries she had run short of. This meant I had to hold the bag (and sometimes it had big gallons of milk
) with one hand and steer with the other.My brother was quite enterprising. He had a very large after-school paper route. There were easily a hundred and twenty five papers over 6 miles to be delivered. It also had to be done on foot because of the geography. When he was in the midst of baseball practice I had to do his route. He never permitted me to make the collections because he didn't want me getting the tips. He paid me a dollar a week. This was 1975. My parents told me I had no choice.
We had a glass shower door which my father insisted on cleaning with some product called 'Jubilee'. He would spend 2 hours cleaning this thing, getting off all the soap build up and lime...etc. We only had one bathroom, by the way. When he was finished, he would tell us no one was allowed to use the bathroom till the next day. He wanted it to stay clean for a while.
My father liked to make breakfast on sunday morning. My father also liked to get up early. It's not too bad when you're 7 or 8...but when you're 17 and were out with friends the night before, being told 'you can't eat cold eggs' at 7am is torture.
My mother insisted we 'kids' phone our grandmother to say goodnight every night. Everytime my grandmother would ask to speak to my mother, however, she'd run out of the room.
When I was 10 I traveled to Italy with my family. My sister was 6. Being only slightly more understanding of the lire than my sister, I convinced her that the bigger the size of the paper bill, the more it was worth. I got her to trade all her little bills for my big bills.
Okay.....your turn. And Mudbug, I do hope you have had a nice laugh!
I didn't stand a chance unless I could have sold her to the Circus
