CDC, WHO, and the media have brought on a turning of the tables by our youngest son, aided and abetted by our DIL, who live next door. Al and I are grounded in the pictured place until further notice.
For this son, most things in life can be explained mathematically, so he brought a graph to our house to explain the percentage possibility of our grandsons losing a grandparent if we don’t follow the guidelines to stay home. After that wakeup call, he allowed us to attend the signing of our old house to the new owners as long as we took our own pens and didn’t touch anybody. That joke was on him since Al and I took black pens, following our Army and educational system training. Unfortunately, counterfeiters have become so accomplished with black pen signatures that blue pens are required, but we were assured they had been sanitized!
Mark and Kelly did allow Al an early morning trip the next day to order a tractor and get lumber from Lowe’s. and to give them credit, they are getting our groceries, signing us up for the homestead exemption, and running any errands we need. However, this has brought to mind the last time I grounded Mark and made me wonder if there is not a bit of payback.
Mark had been stopped by the police as he sped past the high school, heading to a church youth event honoring the seniors, including his sister. Rain delays in his daylong tennis tournament made him late to run home for a quick shower before the event, and he was in a rush. As youth sponsors who provided food, Al and I were already there. He did not bother to mention the encounter with the policeman when he came rushing in. After the event, he went to play yet another round of tennis with a friend.
I found out about the speeding stop when I got a phone call from the policeman, “Mrs. Butler, have you heard from your son recently?” My mental picture automatically went into a spread of a drastic car accident, relieved pretty quickly when the officer mentioned the time he had made the stop. I knew I had seen Mark since then.
After a required meeting by a parent (me) and Mark the following Monday with the officer, who let him off the hook, I took Mark’s car keys for two weeks. As has been the case with Mark grounding us, my restriction inconvenienced me since I had to take him everywhere he needed to go for two weeks, and I was probably just as glad as he was when it was over. I see a number of similarities in these two groundings with one big difference in that he knew when his would end. I expect I also understand the “I’m only doing this because I love you,” rationale much better than he did at sixteen.