Parental Asceticism

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (BTW, last new episode of Star Wars still sucks), I wrote about my specific act of parental asceticism: picking up discarded Otter Pop wrappers in the back yard. Part of that asceticism involved the frustration of never seeming to be able to convince the archetypes of my behavior towards God and my fellow man, that they ought to discard them properly immediately after they are consumed.

But summer is gone, and a new and improved form of parental aceticism has come to bless me. The bathroom, which I made with my bare hands - yes it shows, see a tremendous amount of action... it seems that anytime I pass by, the light is on and the toilet is in dire need of flushing. Like the Otter Pop wrappers, no amount of warning, pleading, weeping, gnashing of teeth, begging, or bribery seems to afford ANY of my children the ability to remember to flush and put out the light.

In order to maintain my sanity, and of course to show how holy and ascetic I truly am, I have decided to keep a tally. This way, when I am made Patron Saint of grumpy and irritable fathers I shall have cool numbers to go along with my hagiography. (You know...like the REAL Saints who might spend three years kneeling on a rock or such)

Thus far, for this week, I have turned off the bathroom light 28 times, and I have flushed the toilet 22 times. Which averages to more than three times a day...and which is of course a very Orthodox number. I wonder if it would be appropriate to include a special set of prayers to accompany these acts of mine? Certainly would be better than what I recite now, which usually is something like this: "Grrrrrr...how many times [rumble, grumble], I cannot believe [inaudible], I kid you not, I'm going to start keeping count!"

Comments

layne (herman) said…
in my "light struggle" i finally just charged my daughter a nickle for everytime that i had to turn off her bedroom light and things changed pretty quick... before i could even make a buck.

ps: your past post: "monasticism and otter pops" is one of my favorite posts
2:37 PM
Anonymous said…
Now, if you want to keep striving toward holiness through this endeavor, by all means, keep turning out the light. But if you lose your spiritual determination, do what my parents did. I had a lock on my bedroom door, but was not allowed to lock myself in under any circumstances (this is when I was in jr high/early high school and tended to lock my parents out of my room). After a couple warnings about not locking the door, I came home from school one day, and my dad had taken the door off its hinges, and it was no where to be found. Every time I locked the door, the door disappeared for a week.

You and Sue have your own bathroom right? So take the lightbulb out of the hall bathroom every time they leave it on. I bet they'd learn.

Not sure what to do about the flushing. Any "tit for tat" I could come up with would be gross.
9:18 AM
Anonymous said…
Epi 3 sucked?
I'm insulted.
;)
2:20 PM
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