Saturday, September 24, 2011

Why Arguing with a Not Completely Formed Frontal Lobe is Pointless

(in order to completely understand this story you have to have some backgrond details. We have to lock our bedroom and my office. Thus I have a huge set of keys that I can't hand to a person who is using a vehicle because then I will be locked out of places I need to get into. So I take the key off the ring. We also cannot trust our kids to give them their own vehicle key because we did that a few years ago and had one of our vehicles stolen by two of our children in the same night -- because they snuck in and took the key off their older brother's dresser. So that's the background).

I happened to wake up at 11:55 last night which was a mistake because I had let our daughter take the van and her curfew was 12:00. I had already been awakened at 11:30 by Tony, who as is typical, wakes me up almost every single night to ask me a couple questions, one of them being why he couldn't have the diet caffeine free pop on my dresser, but I had fallen back asleep. However, I have a small bladder, which probably isn't significant here, except that it explains why I was up at 11:55.

At 12:10 I called her. She didn't pick up. I texted her expressing my disappointment that she hadn't called. She didn't respond. I called again at 12:15, no response. I began to imagine bloody teenagers in the ditch.

I got a text at 12:20 saying that she was now coming home ... that she hadn't been able to find her key. We live in a fairly small down -- everything is about 10-15 minutes away.

At 12:40 she finally shows up. We have the following conversation:

Mother: It would have been nice if you would have texted me when you first misplaced the key so I wouldn't have been worried about you getting in an accident or something.

Daughter: Well OBVIOUSLY (said in a tone that makes a mothers heart pump 3 times it's normal rhythhm) I'm fine and nothing happened.

Mother: True. But I didn't KNOW that from midnight until 12:20.

Daughter: Well it's a very tiny little key.

Mother: Well, maybe if you can't be trusted with a tiny little key, you shouldn't be trusted with a big old minivan.

Daughter: Well you're the one who took it off the key chain.

Mother: You cause me to worry for 45 minutes in the middle of the night and the best you can do is say it's my fault because I took the key off the key ring?

Needless to say I didn't fall back to sleep very quickly.

2 comments:

GB's Mom said...

Some arguments just aren't worth having. Sorry last night was your night :(

Jen said...

I have this kind of argument all the time with my three little ones, aged 6, 7, 8. They are very smart, and argue without blowing up. My 14 year old would have blown up after the first sentence, threatening to punch someone if the argument continued. I laugh at myself when I realize I've fallen into their trap. So I'm not a sicko for clicking the "funny" box at the bottom of your post :P