A helpful skill

In addition to raising four kids, my parents both worked full-time while I was growing up. As you can imagine, they rarely had a moment to relax.

Because I was young, and kids think only of themselves, I never realized how much work that entailed. (Even as an adult I never realized it, until I got my own kid.) But my parents came up with some pretty creative ways to share the housework.

For example, my mom just ruined stuff. She washed all our clothes in hot water and then dried them at the highest heat. We panicked when we saw Mom gathering up clothes, because we knew in about an hour none of those clothes would fit. So we showed her -- we started doing our own laundry, so she wouldn't ruin our favorites clothes anymore.

She also ruined our lunches. Anyone who knows my mom also knows her penchant for freezing things -- ANYTHING. Leftovers, bread, full meals, potato chips (yes, seriously -- she freezes bags of potato chips!).

Well, one day she was watching T.V., and the show claimed you could save time by making and freezing sandwiches. I am sad to say my mom did exactly that. And the result was pretty much what you'd expect -- disgusting! After complaining for a week about the soggy, half-thawed pb&j's, Mom called us big ol' babies, and said if we didn't like it, we could just make our own lunches. Score another one for Mom -- in a few short weeks, she had us all making our own lunches and washing our own clothes.

(My Dad had a completely different take on saving time -- he simply locked us out of the house during the summer. If we couldn't get in, we couldn't mess it up, and voila, he saved time by not cleaning it!)

And so it was with pride that I walked into the garage the other day to discover Mark washing his clothes. He'd sorted them, and was washing the darks. When I opened the door, he was spraying Oxi-Clean on his shirt and I couldn't help smiling with pride. It's been a long time since I've seen a little kid doing laundry, and it brought back a lot of memories.

Perhaps I'd been too hard on my parents, I realized. Perhaps they weren't slackers foisting off their work, but were really just ahead of their time.

I'm sure my son will try to guilt-trip me when he's older about all the chores he had to do as a kid (just like we do to my parents). But I will smile and laugh, much as my parents do now, and convince him it wasn't punishment, it was character building, and really, he should be thanking me.

Now if I can just convince him to do the cooking, I'll be set for life...