How To Properly Annoy Your Parents

There are a few important rules you children must strictly follow to properly annoy your parents. Failure to adhere to the following standards might relegate parents and grandparents to lives of order and boring predictability.

First, in order to be a proper kid, you must use a different glass each time you want a drink of water, juice, or milk. Try to remember which glass you used the last time you felt thirsty so you can use a different one. Adults in your home enjoy looking for clean glasses and being forced to drink out of empty jelly jars.

Second, if you use the last ice cube, don’t bother refilling the tray before your shove it back in the freezer. After gulping down the last drop of milk, don’t even consider tossing anything in the garbage. Simply put the empty milk carton right back where you found it. Parents love children who put things back where they found them.

Third, whenever you get in a creative mood, immediately secure your mother’s sewing scissors for sawing through sheet metal. Be sure to use the fine family cutlery for knifing old tires. Don’t bother worrying about finding paper for your crayon masterpieces. Nursery room walls will suffice. Chocolate pudding also makes great finger paint.

Fourth, while waiting for parents in the family automobile, tinker with all dashboard buttons, knobs, and levers. Be sure to turn the radio to full volume and leave it there. It is also necessary to turn on the heat, turn signal, and windshield wipers. After your heaving breathing fogs up the windows, be sure to write secret code messages like, “Help! I’m being kidnapped!” all over the windows with your fingers.

Fifth, when taking baths, please remember to use up all the hot water. Splash high and hard enough to create your own wading pool on the linoleum floor, then slip on it. Before leaving the bathroom, make sure to decorate the mirror with toothpaste murals, then plug in all electric rollers and curling irons. It is also important to leave water dripping in the sink before you leave the bathroom. Last, remember to throw your clean clothes (still neatly folded or on their hangers) into the hamper and stuff your dirty clothes under your bed. But be sure to complain when you run out of clean socks and underwear.

Sixth, whenever your parents leave the house for a short errand, immediately dash into the kitchen and begin practicing your Grabby Gourmet routines. This includes hiding teaspoons in the garbage disposal, assembling a fine collection of half-sucked Popsicles without wrappers in the freezer, and putting metal objects in the microwave. Next, locate all the chocolate chip cookies and potato chips in the pantry, then secretly cart the munchies to your bedroom. Be sure to leave all unwashed food dishes in obvious places like the far corner of your closet covered with dirty gym clothes.

Finally, whenever your parents send you to bed, suddenly get Sahara mouth and ask for sixteen glasses of water. Later, but not much, tell your parents you are desperate for the bathroom. When you get bored in bed, roll over and punch your brother. When he punches you back, yell to your parents that Jason is punching you, then scream. If you’re a little older, wait until your parent kisses you goodnight, then suddenly remember that you have a fifteen-page paper due the next morning.

I hope all you children have been paying strict attention. If you can carry out these instructions in the finer arts of kidhood, you will keep you parents’ and grandparents’ lives so deliciously disordered and so wonderfully unpredictable that you will be completely invaluable to us. Goodness knows what we’d do without you.