I am from a very small town, (or at least it was when I was growing up) Everyone in town knew each other, their kids, and a great majority of their business, this made life growing up, to say the least interesting and somewhat of a challenge. You could never do anything, and stand any chance at all of getting away with it.

By the time you had committed the offense, and taken the five min walk to the other end of town to get home, you could count with a high degree of accuracy, that you were busted.

I don’t think that any form of communication, from the jungle drums, to today’s email and instant messaging, has ever traveled faster, or been more reliable, than the door to door neighborhood gossip line. As you walked home you could nearly feel the breeze, as news of your latest wrong doing, passed you by.

This became very evident, when you walked in your front door, and were greeted by your mothers’ stern look, and one simple word, “so”. You were as I said earlier, busted.

We had the feeling on more than one occasion, that my mother was a witch, and possessed some form of magical secret powers, or a crystal ball that allowed her to know and see what we had done. There was simply no way that she should have, or could have known about some of the plots and schemes that had been formulated, and put into action in the park that served as our hangout headquarters, without this magic.

Being a parent myself now I am certain that there are things that we thought we had got away clean with, that she still holds in the back of her mind, known but simply unsaid, or perhaps held until an opportune moment.

Funny how when we are younger we seem to feel that we can do no wrong and make no mistakes, and simply breeze through life with no issues. Pity that information from over the years, from people who have lived through it cannot be passed on to us when we are young, to perhaps help us avoid some of the “pitfalls” that we encounter. Wait a minute, those people do exist, they are called parents!!

I guess the pity of it is that we wake up one morning, and regain conscious thought in about our 20th or 25th year, (this varies with different individuals) and with the dawn of the new day, comes the realization that hey, they were right! We then walk around with this air of superiority, like we had discovered this great well guarded secret all by ourselves and this valuable piece of information is known only by us. Ahh to have back some of that youthful arrogance for just a little while. Being a parent my self now, I have had the great fortune of seeing that sparkle, and the light shining in my two girls eyes as they grew older and the secret was made known to them. It is a great moment for a parent, because it seems that from this point on, you no longer have “kids” but another adult living under your roof. It is a great feeling.