On why I pity my kids

My mom is a cleanliness freak. Had she left it to me, I would brush my teeth once a week, take bath on Sundays and save washed clothes only for parties.

My mom would find faults with everything. It would start as early as 6 a.m (that is pretty early for me) - and say: “I couldn’t get the stain of Frooti off your school uniform. What do you girls play with Frooti anyways?”

Bathrooms were a horror. Here are some of the sentences we got to hear…
“What? You just went inside. There is no chance you could have brushed you teeth the way shown at dentist’s clinic”

“Are you sure you had bath? Your towel it pretty dry.” (Damn it! Next time, I must at least wet my towel)

“The walls are all soap. Can’t you pour some water or be careful while bathing?” (What am I supposed to do? Lie down on the floor and take bath?)

“Did you notice the soap box? It is full of water!” (Mom, I was just trying to save water for the rainy day.)

And just when we were done with the ‘bathroom bashing’, and dressing up for school when she would barge in and say “Just look at your wardrobe.”

“Yeah, I saw… what is wrong?” I ask

“Now, look at mine. Everything is washed, ironed and kept properly,” she says.

“Yeah,” I reluctantly agree. More because, back answering your mom is considered rude. But in my defense, she is 28 years elder to me and has as much experience of keeping a clean wardrobe.

Now we move on to the breakfast table, where we get scolded for being magnanimous enough to drop a cereal for the ants that have formed a cantonment in our house. We also got berated for flushing away our milk, and for sharing our breakfast with our dog. Anything we did in our house was required to be done in another way- the supposedly cleaner way.

And what annoyed me the most was that I was expected to clear up the mess created by my little sister. She would give the crappy “You never did this when you were my age. I’ll learn when I am as old as you.” I would buy that, thinking that some day she will be as old as me. The naïve girl that I was, lived in this illusion but that day never came.

Now, I am nothing but a replica of my mom. A ‘cleanliness freak’. My children are gonna have a tough time. I pity them already.