I remember the moment I realized that my mother is way smarter than I had ever given her credit for. The memory is so clear in my mind, it's like it happened yesterday. I was in third grade. We were learning how to correctly address an envelope. I remember being excited about this, because I was the only student who had a sister who was married, and didn't live at home...I even had a baby niece! I decided to address my envelope to my sister. Our assignment was to complete the envelope at home. So, I did my envelope as best I could remember, then went and showed Mom. She very patiently corrected my mistakes and told me what to do to fix it. I was having none of it...embarrassingly enough, I told her how wrong she was, and that I was right! I knew, because that is how our teacher told us to do it. Finally, Mom said calmly, "fine...turn it in like that if that's how your teacher wants it." So, I did....and I got it back with a big, fat "F" on it! And, to add insult to injury, she had no idea who the envelope was for, since I didn't put my name on the return address, so she had to ask the class who the envelope was for...which meant everyone saw all the red marks all over it when she was showed the class to see who it was for. And, of course they all knew it was mine when I had to walk the walk of shame to the front of the class to get my envelope back. Needless to say, it was mortifying, and after that I listened to my Mom's wisdom more often...well, sometimes ;)
I just wonder how much longer it will take Natalie to come to this realization that sometimes mothers really do know best, as she sits and gets her spelling words wrong, because she refuses to look at the words on the board, because she already looked at them once, which should be enough according to her. "Fine", I tell her, "turn it in like that, if you think that's correct"....hopefully she'll get the message when I make her go back and write them again five more times, correctly, of course. The problem is, there is no class to be mortified in front of, so it may take her a little longer to get the message. *SIGH*
