Funny Fail?

I have a knock knock joke.

You go first.

Let's try that again.

Knock knock
Whose their?
Hard.
Hard who?
Hard to be funny with so much on my mind.

I was in the doctor's office two weeks ago, and he diagnosed me with Diabetes. It's a combination between genetics, high levels of stress, and bad eating as a result.

I've had an incredibly stressful year. If all my coworkers were to throw their health problems into a box and shake, the box would explode. That is if they stuck around long enough to watch. One by one, many have quit. Those of us who have stuck it out have suffered from high blood pressure, shingles, and now let's add my Diabetes to the list.

As for the dreaded diagnosis, I've been expecting it for some time. After all, genetics loads the gun and life style pulls the trigger. My dad was diagnosed when he was around my age and under going a lawsuit from his business. In many ways, I am my dad in that I'm a worrier who wants to please. Interestingly enough, I've had a lot of dreams recently that involve Dad being with me. Although he died in 1993, I've never stopped missing him. I guess we never do.

Looking at dream analysis sites, dreaming about one's father hints at a need for protection. This makes sense because Dad was always looking out for me. With me being only 31 when he died, I felt cheated; however, I've since gotten over these feelings by talking to people about their dads. I was better off with my father for 31 years than theirs for 62.

Dad never hit me, but I believed he would. He told me to do that with my kids.

Unfortunately, although we never even spanked our children, we could not pull off the believed fear that we would. As for me, I've only successfully beaten the crap out of fictional characters. Does that mean the violence is in me? I could claim that to scare my kids, but it's too late. They are adults, and I'd have a hard time convincing them that they'll be going over my knee for their insolence. By the way, my kids' favorite thing to do is to tell "You're mama" jokes in front of me, but I'm being ADD, again.

The good thing about my dreams of Dad is that at night he shows up walking. Dad lost both of his legs to Diabetes. Mom, on the other hand, never had severe problems with her Diabetes. I hope to keep the disease under control. I've lost five pounds in the last few weeks and plan to lose more. Plus, I will be eligible to retire in a couple of years. Pray that I can hang in there long enough to receive full benefits for thirty years on the job. It's hard to believe just how close I am.

As a side note, you may look forward to reading about how I abuse my characters after I retire and have time to focus on getting published.

Happy Father's Day Wherever You Are

Theodore Paull

On Father's Day I'm reminded of my dad and our thirty-one years together. I used to complain about how unfair it was to have had so little time with him, but after chatting with various people about their childhoods, I stopped. I'd rather have had thirty-one years with mine than sixty-two with yours. Hopefully your dad was great too, but I've heard multiple stories about abusive fathers. This is not one of them!

Although he never hit me, he could snap me into line with a look  for it was critical not to disappoint him. Unlike most children today, I had fear mixed with respect when it came to my father. When I became a parent, he told me, "Don't ever hit your children, but don't ever let them think you won't." Yep. He had me fooled.

Dad had a funny side too. Having grown up during the depression era, no one spent money on luxuries such as getting one's teeth straightened; so, Dad enjoyed making us laugh by squinting his eyes and showing his skinny little teeth with spaces between each one. Still, I couldn't wait for my handsome daddy to come home each night. My siblings and I listened for the groan of the garage door followed by a steady bump, bump, bump up the staircase. We'd charge out of bed to hug Dad who would remove his sports coat and replace it with his worn, blue terrycloth robe. I loved when Dad put me in bed because he'd tuck me in with a series of geeks, ya it was goofy but so was Dad at times. Although my kids' memories of my father are sketchy or absent, they know what geeking is all about.

He hated this picture but I love it!

Dad loved to tell pop corn, such as how his classmates nicknamed him Tadpole. A teacher with a thick German accent called attendance: Ted Paull came out sounding like tadpole, and the name stuck. Dad had his own nickname for me BooBoo, and my sibs had their fun with theories of where that name came from.

A cornier pop corn came from Dad's boyhood walk to school down Flora Place. Every morning the neighbors would lean out their windows and sing, "Theodora don't spit on the flora." Fertilize the lawn with that story, which always sounded best coming from Dad.

When an earthquake shook our house, Dad hollered, "Florence [my mother]! Quit jumping around up there!" But don't think he didn't care deeply for her. He showed his love and devotion through constant care for Mom when she became ill. He quit working and socializing to be by her bedside while she lay unconscious in an Iowa hospital. Refusing to leave her side, his stress became evident when he lost control of his Diabetes. Mom's health improved while Dad died of "total system failure" in 1993.

I miss my daddy on Father's Day and every day, but I have been blessed to have married a kind man who is much like my dad.

Punishments

With all of the blogger outage mess, I messed up and posted my O piece first, so if you want to keep in this backwards order, scoot down one entry and that should be for today. You can pretend that I posted punishments yesterday, if that makes you happy. ☺ For those who don't care, here goes . . .

My husband and I were never ones to spank our children. Not to say we didn't punish them when they misbehaved, we just found better ways to discipline. Discipline doesn't need to leave kids angry or bitter, but rather to teach children right from wrong.

One of our most successful punishments worked well with our oldest two kids when they were very young. "Do what we say or we won't let you brush your teeth." The kids would scramble to obey because nothing was worse than a stinky mouth. Not only did we get them to mind us, but we changed their view of tooth brushing from something parents force their children to do to a privilege.

I remember another situation when our son was just a toddler.  I was struggling to load our large golden retriever into the back of our van. Daniel spun circles while I was distracted until a truck honked and nearly missed hitting him. Many parents would spank a child for going into the street, but in reality, whose fault is it? He was too young to understand his actions, and I needed to be more focused on him than the dog. If I needed to be angry with anyone, it should have been me. I let my instincts take over when I snatched that baby into my arms. Tears shot out of my eyes as I told him how scared I was at the thought of almost losing him because I love him so much. We locked in a hug for a long while, and that boy never ventured into the street again. Objective reached.

Finally, it would be nice to say that my children never fought with each other, but they did. Once they reached "our" limit of fighting, we sat them on the love seat until they learned how to love each other. We didn't need to punish them because they punished themselves more than we ever could have. To quote Bill Cosby, "Parents don't want fair, they want quiet."

Parents need to quit hitting their children and find quintessential punishments instead. I know I wouldn't do a better job at work, or any where else, if someone hit me whenever I messed up. What is the true message in spanking?