Holy craziness! My daughters are batshit nuts right now. I love them so much, but I ain’t likin’ them a whole lot right now. They have gone all Mad Max on me! Literally. I don’t know if it’s the extremely hot temperatures, their lovely closeness in age which creates constant intensity or if it’s just that burn-out time of summer where they need a break from each other, but the fighting around here is non-freaking-stop and I need a new plan! Hence, the picture and reference to the famous Thunderdome movie quote: “2 men enter, 1 man leave.”
I think it would be awesome to set-up some kind of g-rated, kid-friendly version of Thunderdome. We could call it “Kinder-Dome” and instead of a barbed wire, steel cage it could be like one of those bouncy-house, jumping structures in its design. You know, you still lock ‘em in, only it looks awesome so they don’t know you’re leading them into a trap for sparring ’til the last kid is standing. My girls have been fighting and bickering and squabbling and name-calling soooo much this weekend that if one of these “Kinder-Domes” existed, I would happily put the two of them inside and let them duke it out until only one victor emerged. What do you think?
Screw time-out. Forget teaching lessons patiently and repetitively only to have them fall upon deaf, stubborn and highly emotional 4 and 5 year-old ears. Let’s do this old-school style. They wanna act like Mad Max all day long, then I’m gonna let them solve their issues in the Mad Max tradition. Of course the original Thunderdome didn’t have any rules. That’s what made it so scary for the opponents. Anything goes in Thunderdome. For two girls in the Pre-K and Kindergarten we’d probably have to follow a few basic guidelines. Here’s the rules I’ve come up with so far:
- no hair-pulling
- no punching
- no pushing/shoving
- no biting
- no slapping
- no name calling
- no teasing of any sort
- no deliberate remarks to hurt the other’s feelings
Wait. These rules suck. This isn’t any fun. What’s the point of “Kinder-Dome” if they can’t duke it out? A-ha. I get it. Oh PoopieMommy, you’re so stealth and smart with your reverse psychologizing. Ok, ok, ok…let me get this straight…you get them all excited about the notion of actually getting to tear each other apart in daughter to daughter combat but then steal their thunder (no pun intended) by setting so many rules and parameters? Hence, taking the wind out of their sails, sucking the joy out of their seemingly innate desire to wanna slap each other silly and basically ruin the whole idea by rendering the whole combat thing useless with the strict, responsible guidelines?
Oh, you’re good, PoopieMommy, you’re good. You get them all pumped-up about it. Ok, gals, you act like little heathens who wanna go twelve rounds over who has which headband and who took Barbie’s legwarmers? Fine. Then let’s settle these scores the way nature intended. Let’s head over to “Kinder-Dome” and may the best daughter win. I can only imagine the looks on their faces if I actually proposed such an idea, if they knew such a place even existed. I’m sure at first they would be on board…wait, mom is actually going to ALLOW us to fight? She’s not going to prevent us from scrapping? Too cool. Let’s do this!
Oh but then we get to “Kinder-Dome” and reality sets in. They are faced with the prospect of having to seriously fight it out in front of PoopieDaddy and me. Suddenly, it’s not sounding so enticing. Now it’s kind of sounding awful. I don’t really want to hurt my sister, do I? I don’t really want to get inside the scary “Kinder-Dome” and have only one of us come out the winner? Wait. This is nuts. Mom is nuts! We can’t do this! This isn’t right! I know we’re only 4 and 5, but we know better, don’t we? Fighting isn’t ok. It’s not the way to solve our problems! We need to find a better solution to work this out and resolve our issues more peacefully. We should learn to get along and be respectful and stop all this nonesense and fighting that never makes us feel better anyway. I mean, after all, I love my sister more than anything. She’s my best friend. I don’t want to take her down in that crazy, bouncy cage thing. I don’t ever want to see or think about that awful “Kinder-Dome” again. Mom, please take us home! We don’t want to fight anymore! We promise. We’ll be good. We’ll get along. We’ll stop fighting!
Whew.
