Val Waxes Ascetic

It's all over but the gripin'!

RetirementPartyPalooza is one for the record books now. Let the record show that attendance topped out at 17. That includes the guest of honor, your hostess Val, three sons, two spouses, six grandchildren, and four friends (with assorted romantic entanglements and live-in status). Val accepts each and every member of this crew with as much loving affection as her cold, cold heart can muster. The following tale of when people don't ever start being polite, but feel comfortable enough to be real...is not meant to hurt any familial feelings, but only to serve as a release valve for Val's ready-to-blow top.

It is no secret that Val is a bit of a complainer. In fact, her Hick has often commented, "Val, you'd complain if you was hung with a new rope!" That's poppycock! As IF Hick would ever buy me a new rope! I'd get a rope from Goodwill, or the auction. A rope previously used by other complaining wives to hang themselves with, not knowing how good they had it with a NEW rope!

No, Val is not known for running a Shangri-La retreat offering unicorn rides, a fluffy kitten and baby rabbit petting zoo, an evening hug-a-thon, and free breakfast of sugar cubes and marshmallows drenched with treacle. Val has always been a complainer, and will always be a complainer. Just not to your face. It doesn't mean she harbors harsh feelings towards you. Only that she is irritated over not having control of a situation, and lets it out through her fingertips.

Let the record show that Val is NOT the hostess with the mostess. She is more like a surly Cerberus in reverse, who flings open the gates of Not-Heaven to hasten the exodus of souls from RetirementPartyPalooza. Too many people around are stressful to Val.

I'm not telling anybody how to raise their children. I was lucky enough that mine practically raised themselves. But in my parenting day, I'll be darned if I would have let my boys dine on a plate of dill pickle slices and potato chips. They would have at least a meat item, of which they must eat several bites. Also, Hick always decreed that each boy was allowed ONE can of soda, and if it grew hot, or was gulped in one swig, too bad, so sad. They weren't having unlimited beverages. AND they would find a way to entertain themselves before and after the meal. No whining. No clinging. No pouting. No running in and out of the house, whether at our home or as a guest.

Pardon me for quivering a bit as I tried to keep a civil tongue in my head and prevent my eyes from looking askance, when the front door slammed and bounced back open (from that doorknob issue that Hick never fixed) about eleventy-billion times, with youngsters scampering through the house to try and sit in front of the TV while sipping their 4th or 5th soda. Oh, don't worry that those kiddos were bloated with sugary soft drinks. It's not like they actually finished their first four sodas before getting their fifth! Also let the record show that my very own Pony was probably 15 years old before I let him take a soda into the living room!

No, I don't mean to be critical. I'm just a cranky old Val, set in my ways, having a hard time with the direction that society is taking. Val is not a village unto herself. Are we catering too much to the young 'uns? I know that the three sons were never raised this way, so they cannot be falling back on what they know.

It seems as if the standard operating procedure these days is to appear to be stern, while letting the inmates run the asylum children have their way. Not an indictment of Thevictorian offspring, but a comment on what I have observed from the public education trenches over the past decade or two. The family youngsters were polite and personable, not defiant, but didn't seem to feel a need to follow instructions, despite being given explicit hints. They were all school age. Not toddlers. Val is not a master of walking that tightrope between polite suggestion and critical correction of other people's kids. Stripped of her cape of teacher authority, she would just as soon not risk bossing without a net.

I stopped short of shaking my fist when the kids ran across the lawn. Okay. I really should have been shaking my fist to get the kids out of the living room and onto that lawn. But I'm not one to butt in with the raisin' of other folks' young 'uns, family or not. Nothing was destroyed, nothing was stained. I love them all. They are always welcome in our home. But I am allowed to vent.

The day after RetirementPartyPalooza, I pointed out the nearly full can of Pepsi on the porch to Hick, thinking he would at least pick up the empty Dr. Pepper at the other end. But no. It's still waiting for me. The empty Dr. Pepper, which was a bone of contention because, "We're out of Dr. Pepper and there's no soda that I like!" Heh, heh. I guess beggars for a fifth soda can't be choosers!

Oh, and beggars for a fifth soda suffer must suffer from Butterfingers Syndrome. Because when running around the porch clutching a Pepsi, the can got loose, bounced and rolled along the boards to the edge, where it teetered, unrescued, until it fell onto the lava rocks below, and began spraying its sugary goodness all over other lava rocks and the brick sidewalk and the porch lattice. To Hick's credit, he DID pick up the half-full Pepsi and the mostly-full juice pouch from the living room when I pointed them out and made no sign of moving them.

Anyhoo...it's not like I bought the soda. One of the three sons brought that. It's just the principle of the matter. Whew! This venting has made me feel better. Okay. Not completely better. There's one other little issue that you will hear about tomorrow. And it's a doozy.