When my son was 9 years old, he placed a curse on my head.
Nick was playing Nintendo on a school night and had gone way beyond his allotted time. I told him to turn off the game. “Just let me get past this level,” he begged. I was in no mood to play second fiddle to Mario in his quest to free some princess who did not have to commute to work 3 hours a day , arrive home to fix dinner and then get children ready for bed. Come to think of it, the princess was probably less stressed as a captive than I was as a working mother.
“Turn the game off NOW,” I responded sympathetically.
Nick and I went to bed angry. I was still upset when I left for work in the morning. I had a very long day and an evening meeting so by the time I got home Nick was already asleep. I found this note on my pillow:
“Mom, I am sorry about last night. I hope you can read this before I come home. It would be easier if you had been home this morning. I want to talk to you about it. If I do, I may lift my curse on you. Nick.”
I had to laugh at his quasi-apology and pondered what curse he could have placed on me. I was pretty confident it had something to do with video games, like giving me sausage fingers so I couldn’t manipulate the controller. To Nick, this would have been a fate worse than death.
When we finally talked, Nick sheepishly agreed to lift the curse. He refused to reveal the punishment he had in store for me.
Ten years later, I accompanied my son to traffic court. He received his first speeding ticket returning to college and was charged with reckless driving. I hired a lawyer to represent him, took the day off from work and sat with Nick as he awaited his appearance. Nick was pleased that the fine was only $61.00. I informed him he was forgetting the $500 lawyer fee, the cost of gas to get to court in Richmond, Virginia and the day of work I had to miss.
The moral of the story?
Escaping parental responsibility is a lot harder than getting a curse removed.