By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
I’m thinking of starting a new weekly feature – Did I say it to my dog or my kid? Each week I’ll give you one of the phrases I’ve muttered at least once the week before, and you can e-mail in with your guesses as to whether I was saying it to one of my sons, one of my dogs, or both. Every now and then we might have a spoiler week where the answer is, “my cats.” But more often than not, the answer will be kids, dogs, or both.
It will include such classics as, “What do you have in your mouth?” “Stop chewing that!” “Spit it out!” “Don’t pee there!” “You need a bath.” “Are you looking for someplace to poop?” And, “What did you do with daddy’s other house shoe?”
(That last one gets asked a lot.)
Other notable entries might include, “We don’t eat plastic.” Or, “You’ve had enought treats.” (Never popular with dog or child.)
Another new one for me, just last night, was, “Stop! We don’t tear up all the paper towels just because we can! That was a whole brand new roll.”
You might think you know the quick answers to some of those, but I honestly never knew there would be so much overlap in the weird things I find myself saying until I had both a toddler and a puppy in the house at the same time.
And the things I find myself saying are weird. For instance, I never once thought I would find myself in a situation where I might utter a sentence like, “You don’t need to take your unicorn with you to go pee pee.” But I found myself saying that very thing last Monday night.
I mean, sure, as both a pet owner and parent, you expect to eventually chase someone down with a towel while yelling, “Come back here, I haven’t finished drying you off yet.” You know you’re probably going to end up saying, “Come here! You’re tracking (mud/water/paint) all over the house.”
Movies and television prepare you for things like that, even if previous experience with pets and siblings hasn’t.
You don’t expect to say something like, “Stop licking the furniture!” Or, at least, I never did.
And yet, I find myself saying it, way, way too often.
(The answer to that one is, “all of the above.” Even the cats get in on that one sometimes. I don’t understand at all.)
Anyway, if you’re interested in playing, for next week send me your guess for the phrase, “Come back here and let me see what you have stuck to your butt!”
Winners get to keep the kids and critters for a long weekend while me and their mom take a little vacation.
Jeremy D. Wells can be reached at editor@cartercountytimes.com
