Making the Punishment Fit the Crime

Today I mailed a $649 check to a district court in Washington to pay my husband's bail forfeiture for a crime he did not commit, but which we have no way to prove.  

Life's kinda awesome sometimes, isn't it?

Anyway, it got me thinking about making punishments fit crimes.  I try to do that in my own house with my kids.  For examples, see this post about discipline.  But the King of Punishments is my father.  Hands down.  I will never forget the lesson I learned on the way to my grandma's house when I was just five years old...

It was a cloudy day and I was in the backseat of our tiny car because we were all going to see Grandma.  My parents were in the front seats talking about boring adult stuff, and I was sitting near the window with my older sister beside me.  We were coloring in our She-Ra! Princess of Power! coloring books to pass the time on the drive. 

I was always the scandalous child who had to be warned and threatened before my parents could take me to any social gathering.  I didn't have a very proficient personal filter, and it's still a little faulty today. So in the car that day, being who I was, I took a purple crayon and snickered while I filled in the giant spheres of She-Ra's breasts.  I thought it was so hilarious to color just her boobs and leave everything else un-colored.  I simply had to show it to my sister!

When our giggles caught the attention of my parents in the front seat, I was made to pass my coloring book up to my mother.  She looked at what I had done, (I'm pretty sure I remember her pinching back a smile), and showed it to my dad. 

Not. Good.

My father told me that because I was so proud of my drawing, I could present it to Grandma just as it was.  

I was Horrified.  With a capital H.

And my father followed through.  When we arrived at Grandma's house, I had to tear the page from my coloring book and present it to Grandma as a picture I had colored for her. 

She hung it on her refrigerator.

To this day, I do not color boobs.  I do not draw dirty pictures. Except for that one time on a Magnadoodle, but I quickly erased it. And I only did it that once to entertain Andrew on a long road trip.  Even now I feel really bad about that.

So how do you make your child's punishments fit the crimes? I don't think I'll ever be as good at it as my dad was, but I'd love to hear some ideas.

P.S.  Still time to enter the drawing for the super-awesome scarf or baby blanket!

Spring Break Quake

Once again, I am participating in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. This one might be interesting, because I didn't re-read it, and also, it's late and I am on my third night of only five hours of sleep. Maybe that works for you, but it ain't good for me. Anyway, if you'd like to play along, just click the button at the bottom of this post and you'll magically zoom over to Mama Kat's place! This week I chose prompt #5 - Earthquake! Where were you when it happened?

........................................

It didn't take long for the news anchors to start referring to it as the "Spring Break Quake".

I was sleeping soundly in my bed in Beaverton, Oregon on that March morning in 1993. I'm not sure if my mother's frantic yelling in the hallway woke me first, or if it was the foreign rocking, making my bed feel like a raft on a choppy sea.

Either way, I sat up, tried to blink away the disorientation.

What was happening?

"It's an earthquake!", my father hollered from his bedroom, scrambling to right his glasses on his nose.

"Get into the doorways!", commanded my mother, and we all jumped up and stumbled to our doorjambs. We stood there in the yellow light of the hallway lamp, everyone cautiously eying the ceiling, waiting for bits of plaster to crumble in our faces. We had never been in an earthquake before, and wondered how long it would take for the floor beneath our feet to become still. Or disappear.

Finally, the world seemed to calm and my parents, my siblings, and I all just stood there for a moment and stared at each other in shock. I think my mother asked my father several times what we should do next? But he was just as much a rookie as the rest of us.

Quickly, he made a decision. "Everyone get in the car."

Pounding down the stairs, we threw open the front door and padded across the driveway in our bare feet to the waiting Camry. My sisters and brother and I huddled in the backseat while Dad jammed the key in the ignition to turn on the radio.

"We'll be safe in here until we know what's going on," he said.

Then a voice spoke to us from the radio speakers.

"If you're just tuning in, we have experienced a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, and the safest thing you can do right now is stay in your homes. In case of aftershock it is extremely dangerous to be outdoors or in your car."

The heaviness in the air vanished as we grinned at Dad and began to giggle at his innocent mistake.

Sheepishly, we exited the car and made our way back into the house. The sun wasn't quite up, but it was light enough for me to see that Dad was a little embarrassed at being chastised by a radio DJ. But it was alright with me, because if we had humor, then everything was right with the world, and I knew we would be okay.

(Did you come up with a good name for the bug yet?)

Summer Fun

Our summer rocks! Just sayin'.

Mom decided to go to the drive-in for her birthday and see Karate Kid. (Way more awesome than the original, by the way.) The drive-in is one of my favorite places ever. It's just cool.




My mom's a pretty hot 52 year old, huh? And speaking of hot...






Payback. You know what they say.




This is after four sodas, popcorn, licorice, blow pops, skittles and strawberry shortcake. Sugar is bad. But it's fun!




We've spent many a day at Lagoon, too. Buying those season passes was a really, really good idea. Whenever we're bored we just load up the car, drive for five minutes, and ride roller coasters until we puke.

I love Andrew's face in this one.


I love the names of these rides. I wish that was my job - Amusement Park Ride Namer. I would rock it! However, someone is doing a fairly decent job. Above, we have The OdySea, then below are the Jumping Dragon, Turn of the Century, and Tidal Wave - my favorite from my childhood. Hope you and yours are making some awesome memories this summer, too!

DAD'S PHILOSOPHY: DON'T GET MAD, GET EVEN

My father has always been a vault of riotous entertainment. His forte is teasing and practical jokes. If ever you were to visit him at work, it would be wise to not eat anything out of the cookie or candy jar on his desk. Also, question everything he tells you.

Perhaps the worst of these practical jokes happened to me when I was 18 and working in a day care center...

(This is where those wavy, magical memory lines would normally appear on your TV screen, accompanied by tinkly music, and I can't help but imagine them here.)

I worked in a two-room day care center for about a year right after high school. The two rooms were divided by age; preschool in one room and school age kids in the other. Each room had a bathroom and a little kitchenette for breakfast and snack preparation.

When I was first hired, my position was that of a teacher's assistant, which meant that I did everything the preschool teacher did with the exception of planning activities to teach the kids about colors, numbers, how to wipe themselves, etc. About three months after I started work there, the preschool teacher quit for some unmemorable reason, and the center's director took a six month maternity leave at exactly the same time. The result was that I was the only adult left in the preschool room for a good portion of the day. Aside from being illegal, the situation was very stressful and overwhelming. Most days there were 20 kids between two and a half years and five years attacking me from every side. After the older kids went off to school, Brad, the school-age teacher would come and lend a hand, and that was a relief. Hooo! Just the thought of it is giving me panic attacks.

Well, one afternoon, things were particularly crazy. The older kids had returned to the center after school and I had lost my help. Running from the puzzle table to the sensory table to the blocks station while attempting to sanitize the nap mats and clean up the snack tables was making my head spin. The noise of those 20 toddlers was rising like the pressure inside a fat man's gastric abyss after an all-you-can-eat Mexican lunch. In the midst of all this chaos, Brad comes in from the other room, holding the hand of one seven-year-old named Josh. Poor Josh was learning to live with autism and would sometimes become agitated in the school-age room. Bringing him into the preschool room where he could be left alone to peruse the bookshelf usually calmed him down. So in he came and laid down on the floor in front of the books and began to devour them.

And then the phone rang.

I frantically answered it, hoping it would be a wrong number so I could get back to disaster management.

"Children Northwest, can I help you?"

"Where's my dad?", came the reply from a timid sounding little boy.

"Who is your dad, Honey?", I asked.

"Where's my dad?" and the little voice was beginning to whimper. But it wasn't just a timid voice, this was the voice of a mentally handicapped little boy looking for his Dad. Why would the mentally handicapped boy call the day care looking for his dad? And then I wondered if Brad had a child we didn't know about, because, you know - it wouldn't have been a stretch and it would have made a lot of things clear. Okay, so a handicapped boy needs help. The nap mats can wait.

"What is your dad's name?", I asked.

"Dad!" he cried.

And then I did a scan of the room to make sure nobody was taking advantage of my distraction. Wouldn't you know? Josh was still laying on his stomach perusing the pages of Clifford The Big Red Dog, but he had his hand down the back of his pants and he was picking something out and flicking it across the room.

Did you know that your brain can scream without any noise coming out of your mouth? It can.

Josh was flicking poop across the room and I was stuck on a corded phone, just out of reach of his small sneakers, talking to a mentally disabled boy who needed his father! I didn't know what to do! I could ask the disabled boy to hold on, but he was already so confused and upset, I didn't know if he would hang up and be in danger, or if he would start to cry and become unintelligible, or something worse. So I had to keep the boy talking. So what about Josh, who was still engrossed in his book and still digging for things to fling? I inched toward him as far as I could while still listening to my distraught caller.

"Do you know where your mom is?", I asked.

"Where's my Dad?" came the frightened reply. Shoot! What to do? Still more feces flying to who knows where? I was really, really hoping that none of the preschoolers in the dress up area were getting hit with the contents of Josh's pants.

I stuck out my foot, trying to tap Josh's shoe and alert him to what he was doing while lost in his book. No luck, couldn't reach him.

"Tell me your Dad's name, Honey," I said.

And then the breathless snickering from the other end of the phone line.

I froze and listened to the familiar chuckle of my father as he enjoyed the brilliance of his little joke.

I made the mistake of telling my father that I had an autistic boy here who was flinging poop across the room while I tried to help find the disabled boy's dad, thankyouverymuch, which then made the joke even more hysterical to my father, who I had to hang up on and call back later. There were lots of poo balls to find...

My dad is pretty funny, but his timing is atrocious.

My Dad's Better Than Your Dad!!

In honor of my father's 52nd birthday, I have quite easily conjured up 52 reasons why he's better than anyone else's Dad. (Unless you are Kellie or Joel, and then we share the same father, and if you are Natalie, I think that due to your almond-shaped eyes, there is still debate about who your true father might be, so there you go.) And you can refute my claim to have the best father if you like, and I will understand that it is completely in an effort to make yourself feel better. I'm very sorry.

1. Dad always likes to play funny jokes on me; like when I was eight years old and he let me pick out my first pair of glasses and then told me I looked cute in them.



2. He never let me settle for less than my very best.

3. He taught me to respect my elders, so that the first time I accidentally used a curse word in front of my grandparents, I was properly mortified.

4. Dad instilled in me an appreciation for the fine art of horror films. I was introduced to "The Shining" at age 6, "It" at age 10, and "Misery" at age 14. Those were our favorites, (apparently we had a thing for Stephen King). A lot of the films we watched, such as Bram Stoker's "Dracula" were "paper bag movies". If we wanted to watch a movie that had nudity in it, we were required to put a paper grocery bag over our heads during any questionable scenes. (Can you picture it?) So this way, we could be scared out of our wits while still maintaining our decency, though not our dignity. Unfortunately, this practice was not invented until after the era of "The Shining", so I still have flashbacks of ancient, wrinkly, horrifying naked women climbing out of bathtubs sometimes.

5. Dad loved to be spontaneous - like deciding at 8:00 at night, while we were being given our bedtime baths, that it was a perfect time to visit Grandma 6 hours away. So we got to sleep on a makeshift bed in the back of the Bronco while we drove until 2 a.m. to get to Grandma's house. That's how I remember it, anyway.

6. My dad always brought us souvenirs from his world travels. My absolute, hands down favorite is this one:




7. He taught me that life is as fun as you make it.

8. Dad loves to tell my kids ghost stories. And boy, do I love the endless barrage of questions about those ghost stories that they punish him with!

9. Dad is an awesome example of leadership.

10. He taught me to appreciate creativity.

11. Dad forced me to try things that I was afraid to do. Case in point: We often went out on our boat to do a little tubing and water skiing, attempt wake boarding, etc. I never learned to swim and was therefore afraid of the water. No, not afraid. Terrified to the point of heart failure. So I had never been on the "biscuit" as we called it. One day on the boat, Dad decided to rectify that. He scooped me up and held me over the side of the boat, with no life jacket on, and told me that if I didn't get on the biscuit he would toss me overboard. No amount of kicking, screaming or crying would change his mind, so I finally agreed and he put me down. I got onto the biscuit, Dad promised not to flip me on purpose, and off we went. I clenched my teeth so tightly during the entire ride that when it was over, I couldn't open my mouth. Jaw was locked shut tight. But, once I could open my mouth again, I decided that it wasn't so bad and that it might have actually been kinda fun. That incident led to many a ride on the biscuit. Even the times that Dad did flip me on purpose were wicked fun in the end, and if he hadn't pushed me out of my comfort zone that day by threatening to drown me, I would have missed out on all that fun.



12. Dad was a father first, but always a trusted friend.

13. He taught me to cherish family.

14. Dad gave me an appreciation for a wide range of music just by exposing me to a menagerie of artists.

15. Dad kissed my mother in front of me all the time as a kid. I knew my parents loved each other. It felt safe.

16. He taught me to be grateful for what I had.

17. Growing up, he reprimanded us kids in French. I now have a solid, 6 word French vocabulary.

18. Dad was always so much fun to be with that even just a ride into town with him to run errands was a treat.

19. Dad never had to tell me that he was proud of me, I could just tell. But he told me anyway.

20. Dad can always make people laugh.

21. He used to sing while playing his guitar when I was young. I loved listening to him sing.

22. Dad always gave me what I needed, and often what I only thought I needed, and certainly things I was sure I didn't need.

23. When I was 7, I had another one of my accidents, and Dad came running to pull my bare foot from where it was trapped in my bike, and then carried me, bleeding, back to the house. Another one of those "safe" feelings.

24. When I was 16, and guilty of eating the last Rice Krispie Treat, he taught me the invaluable lesson that one is never too old for a spanking.

25. My dad has always been a good father-in-law to my husband, but because Andrew had lost his own good father, Dad stepped in to encourage him in a time of deep despair. He loves Andrew as his own.

26. Dad gave me his huge eyes.

27. He took me camping...

28. ...and to Disneyland (3 times)...

29. ...and to church. I didn't always like it at the time, but what would I do without that knowledge now?

30. Dad married Julie Sue McClurg, therein giving me the very best mother that a child could hope for.

31. He loved me even though my sense of humor was outrageously inappropriate 99.9% of the time.

32. Went with me to a Daddy-Daughter Date, which could not have been high on his list of fun things to do.



33. Took photographs of me as a child so that I could look back and see how cute I used to be.



34. Being the cool dad that he was, he hand-made us some incredible Halloween masks so that we could put the other kids to shame. We would sit for hours at a time in the days before Halloween as he applied liquid latex, foam, paint and other oddities to our faces. In the end, we had very red skin and a custom mask that would make little kids cry and cling to their mothers. We were not allowed to dress as princesses or angels or anything silly like that. Halloween was for being scary, and we loved it. One year I was a clown, but I had an eyeball hanging from it's socket. My favorite mask was the skeleton, which I wore for several years, until my face no longer fit into it's mold. And if that weren't enough, Dad took us in our hideous costumes to the ultra-rich neighborhoods, where all self-respecting trick-or-treaters go to get their full size candy bars and cans of soda. Smarties and tootsie rolls were for suckers.



35. Dad loves my kids. He never had the privilege of raising multiple boys, but he suffers through the noise and rowdiness and seems to really enjoy them most of the time!

36. Dad taught me to work hard and do a good job.

37. I was out with Dad once when I was a teenager, and we stopped at a store to pick up somethingorother, and we made a pit stop at the candy aisle to get a treat, but he said that we both needed to choose a candy bar that we had never tried before. I don't remember what he chose, but I picked a U-NO, (is that what they're called?). That was the day that I learned that I do not like U-NO bars, and that spicing it up is fun and exciting, even when the results aren't as good as a Milky Way.

38. Dad never sticks his nose into my problems or tries to solve them for me, but he is there for me the very moment that I call for his help.

39. Every Thanksgiving, we helped Mom make the dinner and then we helped with the dishes. Dad would take joy in repeatedly proclaiming that Thanksgiving was a "woman's holiday" in which we could showcase our talents. We all knew that what he was really trying to say was that there was no way he was helping with the dishes. But once in a while, Dad would grab a dishcloth and pitch in. (Ok, once in a great while.) But those times made chores a little more fun. Dad was there, and he made just about anything special.

40. For more reasons than I can list here, I went through high school with my friends loving my parents. Some adored my parents, others loved how fun they were, and others were quite jealous. It was neat to have "the cool parents".

41. We moved a lot as kids. I rarely went to the same school for more than one year. Dad may think that to have been a bad thing in our lives, but I disagree for two reasons. First, I was a huge nerd for many of my elementary school years, (or all of them), and moving meant I could start all over and make new friends at the next place. I never really did succeed in shaking that nerd label, but at least I didn't have to endure the same bullies every year. And the second reason I think moving frequently was good is that I have acquired the ability to easily adapt to change. In fact, I love change. Life is easier when you know how to get through challenges on your own willpower and ingenuity. I think Dad did us a favor.

42. Dad put me in my place when I needed it. I'd hate to have had a father who let me get away with things and thereby grow up to be a world class loser.

43. Dad took us crabbing several times when we were kids living in the Pacific Northwest. On one of those occasions, the biggest crab of the day fell out of the trap as Dad was pulling it into the boat. I reached down and grabbed the prize catch, in my mind risking life and limb, and Dad praised me over and over that day for snatching the crab back from the sea. I felt like a hero. Dads should make their kids feel that way from time to time.

44. Dad's Priesthood authority has been a blessing in my life and my children's lives.

45. He never made me mow the lawn.

46. Andrew once gave me a hickey on my neck when I was 16 or 17. I had no clue it was there, (always have bruised easily...) and Dad saw it. Oh, the fear that consumed me. I made an emergency call to Andrew in the dead of night to warn him that my father would be speaking to him at church in the morning. How humiliating! Andrew demonstrated that he was a real man just by having the guts to show up at church the next day, and Dad had a little chat with Andrew in his truck. Andrew claims that he was told by my father that if he was going to give me hickeys, that he should kindly do it in a place that no one would see so that his daughter wouldn't look like trash. Nicely put, Dad. It may have seemed like idiotic advice, but we were both smart enough to know that what he was really saying was, "If you really love my daughter, you will treat her with the respect she deserves."

47. My dad is SMART. I know that just a little of that rubbed off on me, because I am smart enough to know that I will never be as smart as him. I was about 15 years old when my father handed my sister and I each a copy of "10 Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives" by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. We were told to read it, give a book report on it to him, and when we were done, we would be given our spending money for an upcoming family vacation. How do you like them apples? Smart.

48. Ah! Responsibility. Dad taught me to do what I say I will do, be where I will say I will be, keep a promise and be on time. I am now habitually early to everything, I commit to things that I regret 5 seconds later, but I follow through, and I feel appropriate guilt when I let someone down.

49. My dad helps others, even when it requires sacrifice on his part. He once waded through sewage water for hours to help a widow fix her plumbing. How's that for a good example of charity?

50. Dad loves to laugh. He passed that love down to me. Although, the time that I came down the stairs late at night to get a drink of water, (I was again, 16 or 17), and saw Dad standing at the kitchen sink with a Kit-Kat stuck in an unmentionable place, I did not laugh. I turned around and walked back upstairs. Turns out that he was trying to make my mother think that he had...you know what? He will probably kill me for taking this story as far as I have already, and I should probably just stop right there. If you know my dad, you can guess where the story was going, and you'd probably be right. If you don't know my dad, then you would never understand.



51. My Dad told me when I was 19, and having a difficult time, to "create [my] own happiness." I've never forgotten that advice. It wanders back into my mind when I need it most.

52. Possibly the best thing that my father ever said to me was when I was 18 years old and the whole family was sitting at the dinner table one night. I don't remember what prompted him to say this, but it stuck with me then and brings me joy now. He said, "I hope that one day all of you find someone who will love you as much as I love your mother." Right in that one statement, a whole life was shaped and a future was mapped. I had lived my entire life to that point knowing that my mother was the light of my father's life. He was affectionate with her, had fun with her, treated her like royalty and demanded the same from us kids. My dad wanted the same kind of marriage for all of his children, and he had shown us how to have it. That's how I knew that Andrew was the man I was supposed to marry; he treated me like my dad always treated my mom.

On this day, when my dear ol' Dad turns 52, I am reminded of how much he has blessed my life, and how grateful I am to be his daughter. Happy Birthday, Dad! I love you! I'm sorry you're old!