WHEN PARENTING gets hard, I sometimes call my mom and dad and ask a simple question: “Why didn’t you warn me?”
They never answer. They simply laugh, knowing that I’m getting back a heaping helping of the crap I gave them when I was a kid.
I’m willing to accept my payback, because I know how hard it must’ve been for my parents when my brother and I were coming up. They endured sleepless nights when we were babies, helped with last-minute homework assignments and fed two teenage boys in high school. But even with all they suffered while raising us, my parents had it easier than we do, because in their day, parents controlled the flow of information.
When I was a kid, parents could fib about every major holiday and life event, and you accepted their words as gospel, primarily because there was no way to cross-check their claims.”I got this new bike from a guy in a sleigh? Cool!”
“There’s a rabbit outside laying eggs for Easter? Wow!”
“The money under my pillow came from a fairy? Great!”
Click here to read Solomon’s Rihanna column in the Philadelphia Daily News
(Illustration by Richard Harrington)
