I’m So Mad!

I am so mad! Really, I’m not mad at all. But if you ask my teenager or young adult children, they will tell you I am mad.

Why do they say that? Because when I text, I use periods at the end of sentences. Oops!
I did it again! And, I reply to texts with “K” instead of “ok!” or

Okay!

Or Okie dokie!

Or  🙂 🙂 !!!!!

But never “OK!” because that is yelling!

I’ve also learned not to respond with “sure.” Apparently, that has negative connotations and people think I’m mad. Somehow, I type “sure” but when it goes through cyber space an amazing transformation happens and when it is received, it actually reads, “nope, not at all, not okay, maybe, I guess it’s okay!!!!” Sure!

“Can you meet for lunch?”

“Sure.”

“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to!!!”

Welcome to my world!!!!!

It seems that grammatical correctness equals “mad” in the teenage/young adult world. Periods at the end of sentences are bad!

A parent of several teens was having a glass of wine at the end of a very long and busy week – wait a minute, every week with a passel of teenagers is a very long and busy week so that should probably go without saying – anyway, one of the teens made an observation, “Mom, I don’t remember you and Dad having a glass of wine at the end of the week being a ‘thing’ in the past.”

My reply would be, “Because we didn’t have teenagers!!!!” (Notice there is no period at the end of that sentence!)

When the kids were little, if they got out of bed, the farthest they would probably go was to my bedroom. How is it that a kid could walk down a flight of stairs and across the house in the pitch dark to come into my bedroom to tell me they were scared? Apparently, they weren’t afraid of the dark or of falling down the stairs or running into a boogie man in the living room… I digress.

When the little kids turned into teenagers, I worried they would go a bit further than my bedroom. Case in point. One Friday night my “mom sense” told me to open my bedroom door. As I opened the door, I caught five teenage girls all gussied up and sneaking down the stairs – hushing each other. When I asked where they were going, someone actually said, “To the car to get “Suzy’s” hair straightener!”

Uh, girls, I’m not stupid! I did my fair share of sneaking out (sorry, mom and dad!) and you did not change your clothes, put your make-up on and pull out that sloppy bun to help “Suzy” get her straightener out of the car at 11:00 at night!

That was the week we activated the house alarm. Not to keep people from breaking in – but to keep my people from breaking out!!!!

When the kids were babies and then toddlers and even that awkward stage before preteens, I worried about them. I worried about their bumps and bruises and innocent boy-girl crushes.

When the kids could leave the house on their own, my worry grew. My knees became calloused from kneeling in prayer to plead to God Almighty for their protection and safety – protection and safety for their physical, spiritual and emotion lives.

Parenthood. We do what we do the best we can do it. We make mistakes and we have some successes.

We text grammatically. We forget to use the appropriate emoji. But, kids, we aren’t mad. We try to use your lingo but sometimes old habits invade our texts and we place a period at the end of the sentence.

We. Love. You.

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the
creaking of a rusty gate. 1 Cor. 13:1 msg

I don’t want to be a rusty gate ~ I just want to send a quick text. K?

I welcome your comments – especially if you can relate.