Please Don't Cancel Super Nanny Before I Have Kids...

You know those Friday nights when you sit at home watching bad tv with your mom?

No?

I don't believe you (at all), but I guess you'll just have to humor me then.

On one of these such nights, my mother had turned on Super Nanny. I can't say I had ever seen the show before, but I knew the premise. These parents have terrible children who don't listen to anyone and turn into monsters that basically eat their pets, so ABC sends this Super Nanny to their house who teaches the kids great manners and not to scream every three seconds. All in one hour. Most of these kids have had years of training in how to be horrible little human beings, and she teaches them how to be angels in an hour? Yeah right. How much do you want to bet the kids turn back into toads three seconds after the nanny walks out the door?

Anyway, with a lack of friends around I decided it was too much effort to move off the couch, so I tuned in with my mother. This particular family had a very vocal 4 year old girl who screamed for 45 minutes of the show and managed to put 3 holes in the wall. As I was exclaiming how she was a demon child my mother informed me that I used to be exactly like her.

What?

I mean, I remember incidents where I screamed for hours. And there was that time or two I had to see a speech therapist who told me I would permanently lose my voice if I continued screaming every second I wasn't happy. I also remember needing to have surgery to remove nodes on my vocal chords. And there might have been something about me breaking numerous porcelain/glass/any-material-that-broke-when-thrown-against-a-wall objects. But that was the bad year(s?). I obviously had exaggerated my bad behavior in my mind. (Have I mentioned I have quite the over-imagination?) There's no way I could have been nearly as horrible as this spawn-of-Satan.

Then my mother told me this story:

When I was 5, my father had just returned home from a business trip in Cincinnati and had brought me back a ceramic Cincinnati Reds bobble-head (I just had to ask my roommate what the name of the Cincinnati mascot was. I stopped following baseball when I realized how boring it is to sit in the hot sun for hours while my father yells angrily at the players). Anyway, I loved the thing, (what kid doesn't love a bobble head?) and carried it around the house with me. Well that day I was about to have my afternoon snack, which consisted of a piece of cheddar cheese. That was my snack, every single day of every single week, without change. That fact needs to be understood to explain what happened next.

So that afternoon, my father (obviously not thinking) asked what I wanted for a snack. I just stared at him. Wasn't it obvious? What did I have for a snack every day? Really, and you call yourself my father? So obviously, I just continued to stare at him. He would remember soon.

He didn't.

He asked me over and over again what I wanted. The only phrase I would utter was “You know.”

He didn't.

That's when the screaming started. You'd think that I would remember such a traumatic experience, but knowing myself I'm sure I blocked it out years ago. I mean, hearing it replayed, it was a traumatic experience. Whose father just forgets his daughter's favorite snack? I mean, come on. The only way I can explain the rest of the night is by telling you to watch Super Nanny. Just find the screaming 4 year old and picture my angelic face on her head (this is all according to my mother, hear you, I'm still not sure she hasn't just made all of this up).

But, according to her, the climax apparently happened when my parents shut me in my room until I stopped screaming. Eventually I did stop screaming, most likely due to a loss of voice, but of course I wasn't done yet.

Something you should know about me:
I am not a quitter.

So what was conveniently in my hand? Yup, the bobble-head. This may have been the point where I threw the bobble-head out of the window. The closed window. Of course, this most likely only escalated the tantrum because now my favorite toy was broken and there was glass all over my bed.

I was having a rough day.

That night my parents not only had to move me into their room because I couldn't sleep with a broken window in the middle of the winter, but they also had to go into the backyard and pick up the glass by hand so our dog wouldn't cut her feet. And of course, to prove that I would stop screaming on my own time, I kept screaming until 2 in the morning.

My mother just looked at me after she finished the story, waiting for a reaction.

“Ooops. I guess I was just testing you to see if you really loved me.” Obviously, she did. Yay for her!

“You know how much I love you?”

“How much?” Awww. She's being sweet.

“I love you so much, I hope you have a child just like yourself.”

Fuck