My mother raised three bears, and was married to a bear, and now I wonder how she coped. Well I know how she coped, and it wasn’t pretty let me tell ya. Anyhow, one day after dinner, I got up from the table to go watch “Wild Kingdom” on TV, and my mother yelled, “Hey, get back here!” She had her index finger pointed down at a small puddle of milk that was left at my place at the table.
A possible solution may have been to convert our kitchen into a huge dishwasher, where the doors could be shut, soap loaded, buttons pushed, and the dishes, table, floor, walls, countertops, and all the areas where we left food after we ate we get washed down. Kind of like a European public restroom, where the whole works gets washed and sanitized, before the next user comes in. If only we could have done this, it would have saved me a lecture.
“You don’t ever, ever, walk away from the table and leave a mess for someone else to clean up.” Maybe it was fear, maybe it was a desire to please my mother, but probably it was a craving to get back to “Wild Kingdom,” to watch Marlon put Jim in front of a herd of stampeding buffalo and watch him run. I went back, got a rag from the sink, and wiped up the puddle of milk.
The Life Lesson Learned is taking responsibility for your mistakes is important.
I would love to say, really my wife would love to say, that I learned this lesson perfectly and I always clean up after myself and take responsibility for my actions. The truth is I don’t, and I have dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, and other housekeeping neglect to show for it. However, I do know that it is my responsibility to do it. The greater lesson is that I know the right thing to do is to take responsibility for when I do something wrong. Blaming other people or shirking my responsibility has always led me to major problems, and taking responsibility has always led me to peace. However I am still a bear with furniture a work in progress.
