Dear Ms. Mabel,

I think I remember reading in one of your columns that you had three or four boys. I’m currently raising two right now and I just have one question: when does common sense kick in? My husband and I are both fairly intelligent and reasonably successful people with expectations that our sons will be the same. I love those boys more than anything and I’m just starting to wonder if we’ve gone about this all wrong. They still REALLY lack any common sense. Help! I can’t send them out into the world like this. 

Perplexed parent,

Portland, TN

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Truth be told, as a mother of four, grandmother to 13, and great-grandmother to one, nothing much surprises me anymore, except one thing. I am forever SHOCKED at how kids are. 

Now listen, before y’all go getting your girdles in a gob, I love all my babies, whether they’re 2 or 52, more than anything in the world. It’s been an honor and great joy to be a part of their lives, and I thank the Lord every day for that opportunity. 

But when I tell you they have done and said some of the most mind-blowingly dumb things I’ve ever witnessed, I truly mean it. God love them. Most of these moments revolved around times when I found myself looking at a doe-eyed child thinking to myself, “I didn’t think I had to explain this to you.” 

It feels like there are some things a kid should just know because they, I dunno, exist in the world. There’s so much of that when you’re raising kids, and I have a strong suspicion that’s what you’re dealing with. 

I’ve been compiling a list these past 50-some-odd years and maybe by sharing it with y’all, you’ll feel a little better about yourself … and maybe your kids, too.  

Okay, here we go. Mabel’s list of dumb things I never thought I’d have to explain to a child, but I did:

1. You’ll feel better if you blow your nose/drink some water/lay down and rest for a minute. 

There was a point in my life where I wanted to be a lawyer. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it doesn’t matter now. I spent enough time making the case for BLOWING YOUR NOSE to a pint-sized, mouth-breathing Snuffleupagus who’s whole-heartedly insisting that she DOESN’T NEED TO BLOW HER NOSE, to ever want to argue with anyone ever again. 

Who wants to live that way? Look, I know this is gross, but every mother can relate to a time or two when they saw what can only be called a monstrous abomination exit their child’s nasal cavity and wonder if they could possibly be getting enough oxygen. 

But them little turd buckets will still fight you every single time. WHY CHILD? Don’t you LIKE to breathe? I feel like common sense, or at least their good ol’ medulla oblongata, should have overruled the monetary inconvenience. Nope. Not even a little bit. 

Meanwhile, somewhere right now, there’s a teenage girl who’s complaining of a headache and her mother is hitting her with the EARTH-shattering advice of “Hey, how about we drink some water today? Maybe loosen your ponytail?” NO? Ok. Be miserable. 

But my very favorite is “I’M NOT TIRED.” If I had a dollar for every time one of my kids said “I’M NOT TIRED” when they very clearly were, I’d have enough money to pay for a solo vacation where I might recover a portion of my sanity that has been evaporated while explaining dumb stuff to a kid.

I'm sure there’s some scientific-developmentally appropriate explanation for why kids can’t identify when they are tired.

I don’t care about logic right now. I’m sure we can all agree, we never imagined that we would have to explain to our kids what tired feels like. Are your eyes burning? Do you feel this overwhelming urge to sit down? On a scale of 1-10, how much do you hate everyone around you? 

Well, whatdoyaknow. You’re tired. Go take a nap. 

2). “That was my money… “

Now, this isn’t technically my story, but it’s definitely one of funniest dumb things any of mine has ever done. I know y’all have heard me talk about my granddaughter, Melissa. She’s a good girl, always has been, but her momma spent her early teen years worrying if she’d ever be able to function on her own.

Melissa was around 13 years old, which seems to be peak “dumb” for girls. She came to her momma who was in the middle of cooking dinner, of course, and she was frantic, of course. She had a project due the next day, of course, and she needed a poster board, of course.

After dinner, her momma loaded up Melissa and all the rest of her kids and headed to the store. Not wanting to get all of the kids out of the car, they spent the seven-minute drive going over how to use a debit card at checkout. Her momma thought she was solid on the procedure by the time she let her out at the door, but missed one important step.

A few minutes later, she came running out of the store with a huge smile on her face. Now, Melissa has always been more of a NOT running kind of girl, so her momma was … curious, to say the least. 

She hopped in the car and handed her the receipt.

“It was $7.16 and I got 20 dollars CASH BACK.”

“Why did you do that?” her momma asked. 

(insert long pause of her looking at her momma, trying to figure out why she wasn’t excited, too)

“Well, the machine asked me if I wanted cash back so I said, of course,” she proclaimed, like she had, literally, just won the lottery.

Then it hit my poor daughter-in-law just how dumb her child actually was..

“You DO realize that was MY MONEY and that they aren’t giving away free $20 bills at Kroger, right?”

She didn’t, in fact, realize.

My pretty little baby girl thought, at 13, that she could walk up in the store, spend a few dollars and then they’ll give you money …. for just showing up.

Why did that have to be explained? No, really. Why?

Well, I just realized there’s no way to cover this list in one post. They get mad at me if I make these too long. I’ll just list the rest without explanation.

“You can’t carry peanut butter in your pocket. No, a spoon will not help in that situation.”

“We can’t have a pet cheetah. It would eat us.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the medicine in that bottle. There’s usually cotton at the top of new bottles.”

“No one is going to steal your new shoes. Grown-ups are just joking when they ask if they can borrow or wear them.” (Really though, why do we say this to every little kid with new shoes?)

That’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure there’s a ton more. What am I missing? Do y’all have any to add? Let me know in the comments!