Pardon

5 juillet 2010 lundi

To my parents, givers of life and food and Band-Aids, I full heartedly apologize for the following:

• Insulting your cooking, regardless of the time you spent preparing the meal.
• Refusing to put my dishes in the dishwasher, even though it was right next to the sink, where I habitually left plates, cups, bowls, and silverware.
• Putting empty containers of milk, ice cream, and juice back in the refrigerator.
• Forgetting the ice cream on the counter until a sticky liquid oozed out of the bottom of the container, and coagulated on the counter in a creamy film.
• Claiming the precedence of cartoons over family meals.
• Shedding articles of clothing/toys/towels on the ground, like a deciduous tree in October.
• Blaming my brother for misdeeds that I clearly committed.
• Adding salt and pepper to food before even tasting it.
• Imposing upon your few spared moments alone, and barging into rooms without knocking.
• Leaving drawers and doors open, and lights on, and water running.
• Grumbling about boredom, while making no effort to remedy it.
• Spending innumerable hours in front of the television, slowly killing my attention span.
• Cheating in Uno, solitaire, poker—which I’m sure you were aware of, although you let it slide countless times.
• Spitting out half chewed vegetables, or faking gagging while choking down zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers, or other veggie yummies.
• Chowing down on a meal before everyone had been served.
• Completely ignoring requests to help clear or set the table, put away the groceries, or pick up my things.
• Claiming fullness, then suddenly desiring dessert.
• Accusing you of parental negligence for my lack of video game station (Playstation, Gameboy, Wii, etc).
• Playing music loudly while you were trying to watch the news in the living room.
• Demanding incessantly when dinner would be served, without making an effort to help prepare the meal.
• Sulking when you refused a whimsical request of mine.
• Pushing food around on my plate in an attempt to make it appear as though I’d eaten more than I really had.
• Lying about how much television I’d watched in a day.
• Screaming, crying, yelping, howling, or just plain making senseless noise for no apparent reason, and thereby completely preventing silence.
• Misunderstanding the cost of eating, driving, drinking, playing, and living.
• Believing that “no” could somehow transform in to “yes” if I asked the same question enough times.
• Inflicting unsolicited pain upon my brother.
• Whining about having nothing to eat, when the refrigerator was clearly full.
• Spilling flour, juice, chocolate, or milk on the floor, leaving it there, then complaining upon finding chocolate on my socks.
• Dropping more breadcrumbs than Hansel and Gretel.
• Not thanking you nearly enough for all you did for Ben and me, nor telling you I loved you often enough.

Alban, Constance, Gauthier, Rodrigue—take note. In 8 (or 9, 11, or 13) years, when you’re all 20 years old, I beseech you: thank your parents. They work hard for you. And so do I. But I suppose gratitude grows in puberty like everything else. And for now, it’s up to me to watch you grow into your bodies and personalities and brains, and make the same mistakes that I made when I was your age.