Scarring The Children
A close friend of mine is a forty odd mother of three boys (aged 7-13) and I've always enjoyed listening to her rather dubious parenting methods (this may be based on a feeling of nostalgia and camaraderie being that at the age of four I was a biter, which my mother corrected by waiting until I bit her and then turning round and biting me so hard she drew blood. It worked incidentally, but thats another story). Anyway, the eldest had started tormenting the youngest by scaring him repeatedly. He'd hid behind the curtains in his room and jumped out screaming at him as soon as he'd got settled in bed, resulting in a rather damp mattress. He'd curled himself up inside a cupboard and waited nearly an hour for his brother to open it so he could jump out screaming at him, resulting in his brother runnning away so madly in panic that he fell down the stairs and narrowly avoided braining himself on a radiator. Finally, and maybe this was going too far, after their mother had allowed them to watch Psycho, later in the day the poor little youngster had gone to the toilet and almost as soon as he'd sat down the shower curtain flew open revealing his brother wearing one of his mother's dresses, a shower cap and brandishing a kitchen knife. Apparently a seven year old spazzing out and running away mid-toilet usage produces many new and interesting bodily function related stains that you wouldn't believe.

When the mother told the eldest to apologise the only response she got was huge disappointment that the youngest wasn't getting in the shower when it happened just so it could be like the film. With the youngest now wandering around in permanent shellshock, too afraid to open cupboards, go to the toilet on his own and now sleeping with his parents every night, their mother decided some serious parenting was required. So, what did she do? Grounding? No pocket money? Naughty step? Good old fashioned kicking? Of course not. Being parent of the year, she let the eldest go to bed whenever he wanted. So she waited until he was engrossed in a late night computer game marathon. She turned all the lights off in the house and sat for half an hour in the dark in the living room waiting until she heard him go to the bathroom, knowing he'd see the darkness and presume the rest of the family had turned in for the night. Once this was achieved she began her mission.

This forty odd year old PARENT commenced commando crawling on her stomach from the front room, up the stairs and towards his bedroom. She told me it took her two hours to complete her mission as she wanted to remain totally quiet as she inched her way up the stairs. Including having to stop for ten minutes and bury her face in the carpet to avoid detection as he went for a shit. She gradually made it to his bedroom and opened the door a centimetre or so every thirty seconds in case he looked round. Door opened, she could just say see him sitting on his bed, back to her, completely engrossed in his games, so she continued edging towards him until finally she was under his bed, staring at the back of his legs. With a scream of 'GOTCHA' in a suitably low, growly voice she grabbed the back of his ankles as hard as she could. Apparently this resulted in several things all happening at once. The 13 year old screamed like a girl, jumped up, wet himself, then tried to run away without realising someone was holding his ankles, falling forwards and knocking himself out as his head hit the floor.

Going too far? Personally I think him coming to, still wailing, five minutes later to find his mother standing over him, the lights now on howling with laughter at him might have just been pushing it. I think she realised this when, for the next week, she and her husband shared their bed with both the youngest and the eldest. "He never did it again though!" She told me triumphantly at the end of her story. "Funny that." Was all I could think of to say....
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Sat 11 Nov 2006, 9:18, Reply)