Momdar
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
If you’ve had kids for any significant period of time you learn to listen for things. There are certain words and actions that trigger the most insane of fights between children. One that our spawn like to use is, “I never said you could do that.” Once those words are uttered you have just under 20 seconds to act before there is a screaming match on your hands. It usually involves a toy/game/item that one has said the other could use and wants back, but has been known to be used for any number of other reasons. Another sure sign there’s going to be some groundings happening is when one of the kids nonchalantly walks into the living room and picks up something that isn’t theirs and attempts to walk out with it. It’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away.
Thankfully I have, despite many attempts to the opposite (including concerts, keeping my mp3 player too loud and blasting music in the car), very good hearing for these things. I may not hear a thing being said to me but I’m hearing a whisper from one child to another with words like “before she sees” from the other room. It reminds me of the time, when I was a kid, that my parents had company over and were eating in our formal dining room while us kids ate in the eat-in kitchen. You could not see the dining room table from the kitchen table and vice versa but suddenly my Dad yelled for my brother to sit down and stop goofing around. The guests were duly impressed and finally my Dad confided he’d seen my brother dancing in the reflection off the microwave.
I think there should be a name for this ability, this super power to fight crime (or at least the evil spawn we’ve brought into the world). I call mine Momdar, but I’ll have to admit my Daddy had Daddar. It’s not a sexy ability and it sure doesn’t make the kids feel like they can get away with anything, but it’s something I wish more parents had.
On a side note, this ability is easily transferred to knowing what cats and dogs are up to as well. While sitting in my living room, which has no view whatsoever of the master bedroom, I yelled at the cat to get down from what she was doing. I didn’t hear her so I got up and went in the room and shooed her from trying to play with things on my nightstand. When I walked back out of the room, my husband was looking at me with the “how did you know that?” look and I told him, I heard a little clink as her collar brushed against glass and I knew what she was up to.
It only takes a moment of Momdar to get you grounded.
If you’ve had kids for any significant period of time you learn to listen for things. There are certain words and actions that trigger the most insane of fights between children. One that our spawn like to use is, “I never said you could do that.” Once those words are uttered you have just under 20 seconds to act before there is a screaming match on your hands. It usually involves a toy/game/item that one has said the other could use and wants back, but has been known to be used for any number of other reasons. Another sure sign there’s going to be some groundings happening is when one of the kids nonchalantly walks into the living room and picks up something that isn’t theirs and attempts to walk out with it. It’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away.
Thankfully I have, despite many attempts to the opposite (including concerts, keeping my mp3 player too loud and blasting music in the car), very good hearing for these things. I may not hear a thing being said to me but I’m hearing a whisper from one child to another with words like “before she sees” from the other room. It reminds me of the time, when I was a kid, that my parents had company over and were eating in our formal dining room while us kids ate in the eat-in kitchen. You could not see the dining room table from the kitchen table and vice versa but suddenly my Dad yelled for my brother to sit down and stop goofing around. The guests were duly impressed and finally my Dad confided he’d seen my brother dancing in the reflection off the microwave.
I think there should be a name for this ability, this super power to fight crime (or at least the evil spawn we’ve brought into the world). I call mine Momdar, but I’ll have to admit my Daddy had Daddar. It’s not a sexy ability and it sure doesn’t make the kids feel like they can get away with anything, but it’s something I wish more parents had.
On a side note, this ability is easily transferred to knowing what cats and dogs are up to as well. While sitting in my living room, which has no view whatsoever of the master bedroom, I yelled at the cat to get down from what she was doing. I didn’t hear her so I got up and went in the room and shooed her from trying to play with things on my nightstand. When I walked back out of the room, my husband was looking at me with the “how did you know that?” look and I told him, I heard a little clink as her collar brushed against glass and I knew what she was up to.
It only takes a moment of Momdar to get you grounded.