Monday, June 01, 2009

And then I sipped my wine and laughed.

Saturday evening I got a phone call - right before my phone mysteriously stopped working, but that's another story. So anyway, I got a phone call from my daughter.

Sneaky girl--she used her brother's cell phone. She is programmed into my phone as having a "silent" ring tone, because she calls me with her drama all the time. This way, I don't know she's calling until later when I look at my phone, and by then whatever drama it was that she ABSOLUTELYPOSITIVELYHADTOTALKTOMEABOUTNOW has already blown over.
She's calm, I'm happy, it works for us.

But anyway, so she ABSOLUTELYPOSITIVELYHADTOTALKTOMEABOUT and my son, who is visiting her, ratted me out about the silent ringtone so she grabbed HIS phone to call me (note to self: two youngest children shall now each have silent ring tones) and complain bitterly about a dispute they were having.

My 21-year-old daughter. Called me. To complain about my 18-year-old.

So what do you think I did?

Well, I had them put on the speaker phone. Then I told my son that if she's right, he'll get his butt kicked every day he exists in boot camp.

Then I told my daughter that if he's right she needs to learn to take better care of her things.

Then I told them I didn't care who was right, and to work it out like the adults they were, and leave me out of it, because I'm now officially out of the business of Solving Disputes Among Kids.

Daughter complained bitterly about my failure to react appropriately to her very urgent need to be told that she was right and he was wrong.

I told her I loved her, while she was in the middle of her tirade andheknowsnottodothatItold himoverandoverandhesayshe
didn'tbutIKNOWhedid...

and then I hung up the phone

and then I sat in the sunshine.

...

7 comments:

  1. SDAK no more!
    I love it..now I do not feel so bad for the many times I have not answered my phone...for kids I do not want to talk to at that moment...They seemed to have grown out of that ohmygodihavetotalktoyourightnow mode..maybe yours will soon too..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh I can't WAIT until I don't have to SDAK. Soon. I can outlast anyone. Soon. I'm stubborn - I will make it.

    Laura

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sensational work

    ReplyDelete
  4. Since I'm no where near having my chickadees all flown, I've had to master the art of settling disputes so that no one walks away happy. Oh, and of adding extra chores to everyone if the dispute is pointless/annoying. It's like they have a really large deductible so only if it's a major debacle do I now get called in to settle. But I totally forgot to work in the part about sipping wine in the sunshine! Your system is way more better. Can I borrow your fast forward button for the next decade?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love the silent ring... My kids are too young to have to phone me to complain, but I have a few relatives that could use the treatment!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Here's another one: apparently, my brother tattled on my to my mother because I pissed off his wife. I'm 45, and they're 36ish. I pretend to be blissfully ignorant.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Funny, my sister and I call each other to complain about our mother...she calls us to complain about Dad. I am green with envy over your new SDAK status!

    ReplyDelete

Comments containing links to commercial websites from people with invisible profiles are deleted immediately. Spammers are immediately deleted.

Moved.

 I'm no longer involved in multisport or endurance sports. I've started my own business, a psychotherapist specializing in anxiety d...