Be Creative!

As a parent we often ask ourselves "which stories from my childhood do I tell my kids now?" or "should I wait for later?"

Let me give you some background. When I was a kid, my siblings and I spent a lot of time alone without adult supervision as my parents were divorced and my mother worked. I must say that we became some very creative kids. Now you don't have to have divorced parents to be creative and come up with crazy things to do with your siblings. I think we just got away with a little more because we didn't have the adult eye watching. So we were creative but not necessarily logical, and quite wasteful. One time my brother and I made up a restaurant called "Am I that weird?". I think the answer to that question is obvious from a name like that. We made little menus and even burnt the edges to make them look authentic (#1 rule for kids: don't play with matches. What were we thinking??!!!). The menu consisted of Twinkies. Any type of Twinkie you could ask for. Twinkies with cherries, half Twinkies, etc. My mom always wondered why we went through the Twinkies so fast. That's what happens when you are serving all of your friends Twinkies at your up scale restaurant.

So one day my siblings and I came up with this game. I don't even remember how it started. We would take the white middles out of all the Oreo cookies, wad it up in a big round ball, and then...... throw it at the wall. For some strange reason this would send us into hysterical laughing fits. We would peel it off the wall, wad it up and throw it again. Lame I know, but it was funny at the time. The problem with the white Oreo middles is that they are a bit greasy, probably due to the lard or Crisco that they are made out of. Grease leaves grease marks on the wall. One time my mom said "what are all these spots on the wall from?" We of course didn't know because "I don't know" did it. We told my mom this story just recently. I wish I could have taken a picture of the look on her face. Probably the same look I have on my face when my kids do something totally illogical. All she could do was laugh and I'm not sure she wanted to hear any other things we did that she didn't know about. Daria and Dustin were all ears to this conversation (which happened a few years ago). Who knew they were listening?

So that brings me back to my original question. What do we tell our kids and when? (I'm kidding of course). Yesterday the kids were preparing to go to a friends house while Ken and I attended the temple. I reminded them that I would rather they find something creative to do besides playing on the computer. I explained to them that I didn't even have a computer until I was in 11th grade and even then it was my dad's. I spent my time being creative. Daria then says "Yeah, like throwing Oreo's at the wall?" "Can we do that sometime?" Darn! why is it that what we tell our kids always comes back to haunt us!


Just for old times sake I think I might buy some Oreo's and play with my kids.