Most of us have had the experience when we were children. You are going to do something you shouldn’t, you check to make sure that no one is looking, and then immediately your mom calls out from the other room. “I told you that you can’t have cookies until after dinner.” How did she do that? You have already done an eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head check when you were hugging her. There’s nothing there, just hair. You’ve asked before, but Mom just raised her eyebrows at you. Like there is something she knows that you don’t.
Finally, you kids out there, I have the solution. As we get ready for the field both Stacey and I had to go through training. We decided that for this stage, we should always have a parent home with the kids. This means that we went through training back-to-back. As Stacey is going through training, I am now at home spending time with the kids until we leave. Being the “master of the house” I have begun to learn some of the secrets that mothers have been keeping from us. And I am here to expose those secrets to the world!
- Eyes in the Back of the Head. I already mentioned this one above. Moms don’t have eyes on the back of their heads kid, they can’t read your mind. It’s not even a high-tech surveillance system. It’s all in the ears. It’s an acquired ability to recognize the slightest sounds that indicate disobedience. The sound of a chair scooting across the kitchen floor, the clink of the cookie jar lid, even the soft crunch of the Toll House between your teeth. You can’t sneak around because you are loud. Mom’s don’t need a special power for that, they just need to know what to listen for.
- Human Lie Detector. Every once in a while you are able to get that cookie down when mom is in the other room. Remember, it’s not a superpower. If she can’t hear you she doesn’t know it’s going on. However, Moms count cookies and really she is bound to find out. And when she asks you if you ate a cookie, you might as well tell the truth. Why? Well, because when you lie, you shift your feet, won’t look her in the eye, and you stumble over your words. On top of that you have horrible excuses. Dogs can’t jump up on the counter, eat a single cookie out of the jar, and then put the lid back on. She knows you are lying not because she has superhuman powers, but because you are just a bad liar.
- Cooking. This one is actually for husbands. Cooking is actually not a superpower. The interwebs are full of recipes and they tell you how to cook things. Sure there are ones out there that use made-up words like “saffron” and “kale”, but you can always just skip those. There is no need to pretend like you have to be a woman to make food. If you are able to follow the directions to fill out a TPS Report Cover Sheet at work, you can follow a recipe. And actually, if you make dinner sometimes, it scores a lot of points (another secret I have learned).
So, there you have it. Sorry moms to let the cat out of the bag. Kids, I hope this was helpful. But in the end you are not going to get away with anything anyway. So, just do what your mom says.
