Inherited Mom Quotes

When I was a little girl I heard the same stuff over and over. I can remember thinking, “Where is she getting all this stuff she threatens me with?”
Now that I’m old I know. Baby girls have to have some kind of computer chip planted in their heads because every mom, including me says the same things to their kids. You know kids are not stupid. After a length of time they figure you out. When a mom says, “….and I’m not going to tell you again.” the kid thinks, “good I won’t have to listen to that anymore.”
Dad’s also have some kind of an implant. My kids’ dad had one that I had to be careful not to laugh when he said it. “I’m never taking you kids anywhere again. From now on you stay home when mom and I go somewhere.” Isn’t that a good one? I can just see him leave a three and five year old home alone.
I find myself saying the same things to my thirty year old that I did to my older kids when they were little. “Make sure you wear a heavy coat so you don’t catch cold.” His remark is, Yaaaaahs Mother.” See the difference between my mother and me is that she enforced it. Snow pants were the thing for little girls to wear in the winter in Iowa. That is because little girls wore dresses to school no matter what the weather was like. Snow pants were the vain of my existence. They had cuffs on the bottom so you had to take your boots off, then your shoes, then you had to unzip them, then last but not least they had suspenders to keep them up under your coat. The suspender clip always came all the way off. Then it was a challenge to get the clip back on the suspender. And on and on it went. When I got older it made no difference. Snow pants, however, I got smarter. They came off in the bus and carried into school. I then put them back on in the bus just before I got home. That was a hassle, but at least I didn’t look like a “goon”. I can remember that was a word I loved to use that my mother just hated. It was so fun to irritate her. I think that particular trait is in the genes. My kids sure loved to irritate me.
I can remember coming home from work one night exhausted. Melanie was playing the piano. I asked her to quit so I could relax and watch television. She continued to play. I asked her again with a raised voice. She played a few more notes. I told her that if she played one more note she was in big trouble. You guessed it. Plunk came the one note. Then the chase was on. She was about fourteen and knew better.
The best quote that mothers use is: “if all the kids jump off the cliff do you expect me to let you jump too?” Now that quote came from my mother in the 1960’s. I will bet that it is over one hundred years old and still going strong. All I wanted to do is go to the drive-in theater with a bunch of kids on buck night. As I look back, it probably wasn’t such a good idea but I finally did talk her into it and it was on Wednesday night, no less.
One that I was famous for was answering one of my children’s questions with, “Uhm Hm” Now that could have been no or yes. You could agree to anything. You don’t have a clue especially when you are reading a good book. My mother did the same thing.
I think the quote that my kids hated the worst when they were little was, “You can go shopping with me, but you can’t buy anything.” I know one time my oldest son said, “Well just write a “sheck”. I think he was about four and had no idea that I needed money in the bank to write a “sheck”.
There are many “mom quotes” I still hear myself say to my grown children. They are embedded in my family to stay generation after generation because I loaned them out to my children to carry on for me.