Aselin

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I must make something very clear: there are HUGE holes in my parenting.

I know it's easy to create cyber fantasies about the bloggers you read and I don't want to give the wrong impression. I am only doing a marginally acceptable job at preparing my children for the real world. I try and disseminate relevant skills to them, but the reality is if at some point in their adult lives they don't live in my garage, it will be a miracle.

Case in point: despite the fact that we live in suburban Arizona where the temperatures often top 110 degrees in September, we do all our own yard work, and make our children join us. You might be nodding with impressed approbation thinking we are raising the kind of kids who will go around the neighborhood starting their own landscaping businesses or better yet, mowing the lawns of all the widows in the 'hood. Well just stop right there.

This Saturday hubby sends Unnamed Child #2 out to the garage by himself telling him to get started on his portion of the lawn. At a few points during this Rockwell-type moment I look outside from my air conditioned window to see my progeny quickly being dessicated by the sun. Sad, but watching them was making me miss my show on Food Network so I lost interest in their plight.

About fifteen minutes later, sweaty kid comes inside and proceeds to make themselves a snack. Getting ready to fire up the gas stove, Unnamed Child #1 yells at #2, "What is that smell? Why do you smell?" I barely look up because I often ask the same question of all of my children.

With all the savvy wisdom of one who has been appropriately instructed in the use of power tools, #2 says, "It's gasoline, I spilled it all over my pants when I was filling up the mower."

Unnamed Child #1 then shrieks with all the hysterical lung capacity of a teenage girl, "DON'T LIGHT THE STOVE!!!!!!"

At this point I probably should have gotten involved, but #2 beat me to the punch when they asked, calmly and with a straight face if their pants needed to go in the laundry because they had gasoline all over them."

Yep, some parents teach their children about the incendiary properties of gasoline before they let them play with it. Other parents teach appropriate hygiene and fashion boundaries that give guidelines for wearing flammable liquids. But those parents don't get to watch complete episodes of the Iron Chef do they?