Stupid Kid Tricks

By Bob Cox

As I watch my wife Diana’s mounting frustration with her 20 year old Grandson shoot through the roof, I have to sit back and smile. The situation takes me back to the days when I was a young man struggling to make good choices and allowing temptation to get the better of me and my exasperated parents.

During my career as a college student, my parents were chronically frustrated with my obsession to pick the coolest looking cars that broke down constantly. I’m sure you’ll never guess who I went to for help to solve my chronic transportation challenges; that’s right…good old Mom and Dad! This never ending saga had them on an accelerated aging regimen, sort of like each President of the United States.

My first car was a beautiful 1967 Chevy Camaro. There was just one thing wrong with the car, aside from the fact that it sat in the driveway almost as much as it got me from point A to point B. The engine was far too small (an inline 6 cylinder). How could I maintain the cool image of a muscle car enthusiast when my parent’s big boat of a car could dust me off the line?

That is when things went from bad to worse as I chose one high powered muscle car after another. They all looked faster than greased lightning as they sat on the secluded streets of Granite Bay. If they only ran, then I’d really have something!

The pattern of dysfunction between my parents and me played like an old record with an annoying skip. Whenever my car would break down, which was more often than not, I would ask Mom and Dad if I could borrow the white submarine (My nickname for their 1973 Chevy Bel Air) to get to school and work. That’s when that tired old song, “Griping and Lecturing” would play on and on. I did everything I could to tune them out, all the while resenting them and doubting myself a little more with each encounter.

What I now realize from those experiences is how my parents actually enabled me each time they bailed me out. They would gripe endlessly about the bad choices I made and how it inconvenienced them (which I did very well) and then my confidence would decline with each disaster. My low self confidence would inevitably entice me to make even more bad choices, leading us back to where the viscous cycle would begin again.

Looking back, the best thing my parents could have done for the collective sanity of our entire family was to give me a fair and reasonable time line to get reliable transportation and then stick with that time line, no matter the consequences. I would have been forced to figure it out on my own and my parents could have enjoyed some well deserved moments of peace and sanity. Instead of getting sucked into more “Stupid Kid Tricks” from yours truly, they could have been watching TV and laughing at “Stupid Pet Tricks” on Late Night with David Letterman!