“Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.”

“I just realized that while children are dogs—loyal and affectionate—teenagers are cats.  It’s so easy to be a dog owner.  You feed it, train it, boss it around.  It puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting.  It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it.  Then, around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat.  When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who died and made you king.  Instead of dogging your footsteps, it disappears.  You won’t see it again until it gets hungry—then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at whatever you’re serving.  When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before.”

“As the single mother of a teenage son, I was open to tips on successful parenting.  I heard that stressing that I had given birth to him might earn me some respect.  So, during one argument, I said, ‘Remember, son, I bore you.’  He shot back, ‘Yes, Mom, sometimes you do!’”

A woman telephoned a friend and asked how she was feeling.  “Terrible,” came the reply over the wire, “my head’s splitting and my back and legs are killing me.  The house is a mess, and the kids are simply driving me crazy.”  Very sympathetically the caller said, “Listen, go and lie down, I’ll come over right away and cook lunch for you, clean up the house, and take care of the children while you get some rest.  By the way, how is Sam?”

“Sam?” the complaining housewife gasped.  “I have no husband named Sam.”

“Oh, I must have dialed the wrong number!” exclaimed the first woman.

There was a long pause.  “Are you still coming over?”

“There are 3 ways to get something done—do it yourself, hire someone else to do it, and forbid your kids to do it.”