Don't Make Your Mother Cry

When we were kids both parents worked outside the home and so it was part of our daily lives that we were expected to carry our load with respect to daily chores. In consequence my parents created this duty chart in which each of our names were listed down the left hand side and along the top were the days of the week. Within each of the corresponding 42 boxes were the chores each of us were expected to perform on any given day. It was hung on the pantry door in the kitchen and every day we were expected to check the listing and perform the prescribed labor. Failure to perform those designated chores would result in extra assignments the following day or worse including, but not limited to, indentured servitude in consignment to the neighbors. Okay I'm lying about the last part but only slightly. 

In any event, as we grew older the tasks grew more troubling to our rebellious teenage status, especially given the Woodstock years, to a point where one day my brother Mike and I decided to hold a revolt and no longer give in to the free child labor dictum that was forced upon the proletariat masses (wait I digress again). In any event we stopped doing the work. When my mother got home it was immediately a point of contention and as usual, after a brief but heated discussion, she headed to the kitchen utensil drawer to find her preferred weapon of choice. THE WOODEN SPOON. She came back into the living room and gave us the final ultimatum of doing the chores or facing the consequences. When we refused to succumb to the threat of violence, she simply approached while brandishing her Aunt Jemimah artillery. What she didn't expect was that one of us grabbed the wooden spoon out of her hand and snapped it like a pretzel leaving it in two distinctly less threatening pieces. I say one of us because I really don't remember whether it was Mike or I. The affront was immediately followed for only a brief period with us cheering and laughing like convicts running from the road side chain gang.Within a flash of that my mother began to cry. We were stunned. She just sat down in her rocking chair and cried. We were transformed from Lenin to Schmuck in a heartbeat. Our party ended as quickly as if a riot squad fire hosed us with ice cold water. We look at each other and without a word set off to go do our chores. 

Never make your mother cry.