Growing up our family did not have a TV. We used our books, Barbie’s, Fisher Price toys (especially the castle!!), and dome jungle gym to fill our days with excitement. I can honestly say as a child I was never bored. I always had my sister to play with and we had hours and hours of imagination to let loose on the world.
Listening to Hula Girl complain about being bored the other day chapped my hide. I must admit I was beyond irked.
First off she has a plethora of books, secondly the outdoors is a child’s playground, thirdly she has her bike, fourthly (and the least desirable I suspect) she has her brother.
I never dared to tell my mother I was bored for fear that she would put a broom in my hands or worse yet a toilet brush. So I tried my mother’s genius. Today I am the proud owner of one very clean toilet and nicely swept floor. May be she’ll tell me she’s bored today. I really need some laundry folded.

When I was young we had a neighbor that I did not get along with. The little girl next door was MEAN. She was younger than me. I could not understand that the “kill them with kindness” never seemed to melt her ice cold heart. I tried EVERYTHING I could think of. I asked her over to play knowing that she would be mean. I made tea parties and games so that she would just smile and say something nice. I was a glutton for punishment.
I would cry to my mother and tell her my woes. She would say to me, “Sweetie, live a day in her shoes and you might be the same way.” I never really knew what that meant. All I knew is that I was not allowed to play at her house. That and everyday I heard her mom yelling at her. I just figured she was as rotten to her mother as she was to me. She moved when I was 14 and I had not seen her for years until last week. Last week changed my perception on what my mother meant when she told me to live in her shoes.
I was at the mall shopping for a birthday gift. I took a look at this woman that looked older than me but she looked familiar. She looked at me and instantly knew me. She came over and hugged me. I was still in a little shock and could not place her. She then told me who she was and instantly I felt rocketed back to my younger years. I find it amazing that still to this day a smell, a person, a picture can awaken my deeply hidden feelings. I was taken back that she smiled and hugged me. We started talking about our childhood and she revealed her heart.
When she was 3 her brother was born. Their family was happy. Or at least her feelings thought they were happy. At 4 her mother went into her brother’s room and found him dead from S.I.D.S. Her mother was mortified and mourned in a terrifying way. She bottled up her hurt and took it out on their family. Her mom became pregnant again with another boy. Meanwhile the father could not take the abuse and left her with the two children.
The trauma of those years were written deep in the crevasses on her face. The smoking, the anger, the drinking, se*, the drugs, had not taken away the hurt little girl inside. She was se*ually active at 9 years old. 9 YEARS OLD. She just wanted to be loved and taken care of.
She then revealed how me doting over her made her feel important to someone. She always felt love in our home. The reason they moved away was not because they wanted to move. It was because my mother approached her mother about taking care of her children. My mom wanted to raise those two children with us. She wanted to rescue them from the devastating life that they had. The final straw was when my mother called social services because of the marks on her face and back. Her mom could not handle the meddling.
My mother taking a stand against the abuse cause a ripple effect. At 14 the neighbor girl was shipped off to her father’s house. She had been into all sorts of drugs and alcohol up to that point that she was kicked out of school and sent away. She revealed that it was the best thing that ever happened to her.
At first she bucked the system. She tried to commit suicide. She did everything to rebel. Her father seeing the hurt on his daughter started her into counseling and into a local church. That’s where her life began according to her. She still lives with the abuse her body suffered from the first 16 years of her life but her spirit is healthy.
My mother never revealed any of her story to me. To me she was a child that had no heart. My mother did not tell me because she was fearful I would pity her and be pitiful friendly to her. That’s not what she needed. She needed someone to fight in her court. Someone to really want to be her friend. That someone was me.
She has gone on and is a social worker. She fights for the rights of abused children. She knows their fight. She knows their road. She herself has been there.
I am amazed that to this day I am learning lessons of life from my mother. I would not have wanted to live in my neighbor girl’s shoes. I grew up in a happy home. I see now that a day in her shoes would have given me insight to looking beyond the person and seeing their circumstances. It would have revealed that she was a sad little girl. One in desperate need of love and hope. She found that hope in a neighbor mom that was willing to stand up and take notice.

What’s worse than having a curfew? Not having a curfew at all! Decisions…decisions. I know that is very confusing.
When I turned 16 I had a 9:00 pm curfew on the weekdays and a 12:00 curfew on the weekends. This was a point of contention for us. I always wanted to go to coffee at the local coffee house but no one that was any got there until midnight. So I broke curfew for the first month on a regular basis.
Finally my mom and dad had a little “come to Jesus meeting” with me and I was informed that for every minutes I was late they would deduct WITH INTEREST from a checkbook of hours. For every minute I was late it was 10 minutes off the next cerfew night out.
So I bucked and bucked the system. I then negotiated a bonus feature that if I was in early would they put it the minutes back into my book and may be I could save up to be out late another night. They added that back but with a reduced rate. It took 10 minutes to get 1 minutes of extra time out! TALK ABOUT AN EXCHANGE RATE THAT STINKS!! Every weekend we went to the book to see if I had more minutes out or if I was in the red. (rule of thumb…I was in the red)
This taught many important lessons:
#1 What my parents said went and they meant it. They were very consistant
#2 The value of time. BIG ONE. Because I did not have a lot of time to waste, I did not spend my time just loitering about
So in a way they let me control my curfew with their guidelines. It was one step in learning before I stepped out on my own.

My mom did some extreme things to get her point across. I was 15 when she decided to “show me the light!” Being a nurse and in the same hospital for 17 years she had some pull with the higher ups. She chose a full moon night as the one that I went with her to work. The extreme take your child to work night. I am so convinced that a full moon has an effect on a person after that experience.
She worked the 7pm to 7am shift the night of the full moon. When we walked into the ER they were stitching a few people up from a car accident. After that it was pretty quiet.
Then at about 11:00 the place started hopping. I could not keep up. Between the suicide attempt, drunk driving accident, drug overdose, handcuffed prisoner that had been in a fight, and a teenager in labor I saw it all that night. I also saw a pedestrian accident where a person was walking with a stroller and was hit by a truck.
That night I saw life outside of my protective shell. I saw people dealing with their consequences, making bad choices, some not having choices at all and some that were in the wrong place at the wrong time…..
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I had such a response to Weeds of Discontentment that I think that once in a while I will post another Mommyism!! She had hundreds of them so it will take me a while to get through them all but I think it will be fun and memorable!