NO!

NO! nonononononono. Not now…not ever! Nada! You are living in a fantasy world if you think I’ll do that. No. Nope! Forget it! I can’t. It’s illegal. No, no a thousand times no!

I’m just practicing. It has been a while since I my kids were little, so I am way out of practice. Kids ask so many questions that you get buried under the sheer volume and sometimes say yes just to get them to shut up. You regret that yes, but once it’s out there, the kid will never forget. To a kid, even “Well, we’ll see about that…” means yes. “Ask your mother.” means yes to a kid. Sometimes, even a very firm NO! means yes to a kid. God, I thought they would never grow up.

“No” does get easier as they get older, well saying “no” gets easier because you get so much practice. It still wounds the soul having to tell the light of your life they can’t have what they truly desire most in the whole world. Our first born heard “no” so often that it was her first word. We knew that wasn’t a good sign, so we made a point of using more positive ways to be negative with the other two. It can’t have been very effective because here I am three decades later still thinking what a bastard I was.

I have learned to live with having messed up my kids. They have now had enough time away from me to have repaired most of the damage I did when they were growing up. Most of it…

 

The reason I am talking about this is because of a picture I saw on Facebook today. It was a picture of Brendan’s wife, daughter and dog. I have little trouble saying “no” to Tara and Finn the dog, but I can tell that Tsunami won’t be hearing “no” from her Poppa very often. I am going to make sure that her mom or grandmother will always be around. Brendan will be just as bad as I will be, but hopefully the ladies will be immune somehow to those eyes. She can’t even talk yet and I just want to start giving her stuff.

 

Hurricane and Tornado are almost as hard to say no to, but they are a little older and I can actually see the devils horns growing out of their foreheads. I make sure there is always candy in the house for them and pretty much anything else they desire while they are here. They are pretty smart, knowing that their mom and dad will veto any really nutso thing I do.

Tsunami is the baby and so cute now that it hurts. When she cries now, I get in a tizzie about how to stop the tears. God help me when she gets older.

I will keep practicing my “no’s” and who knows, I might just get a spine before she asks for the car keys, a pony or the deed to a platinum mine.