B-Rant

- submitted by B. Carrelli on 07/28/2008

  

Gas Prices Up, Economy Down. Who Ya Gonna Call? A Mother!

By Bari Carrelli

Employment rates are down, prices are up and the economy is shuddering to a stop like a 1979 Chevy Chevette. It's time to bring in someone who can get us back on track. We need a Mom.

Economists and politicians live in a theoretical bubble, like "Wealth of Nations" author, Adam Smith who gave birth to the invisible hand theory: when a business owner pursues his own self-interest, his success will have a positive affect on the community. If Mr. Smith had children he might have revised his theory.

A Mom lives in the real world. She has seen her angelic child sharing cookies with a new friend, then turn around and tell her little brother that he can have the cookie that fell on the floor and was licked by the dog.

A Mom will laugh at the trickle down theory. She knows that, "Buy me that $600 motorized skateboard and I will do the dishes every day for the rest of my life," means that the dishes will get done once and the only trickle down benefit will be several emergency room visits and a check to the neighbor to repair the car her child crashed into.

A Mom will put an end to borrowing money. She survived a full body tantrum in aisle nine when she told little Zack that he couldn't have an advance on his allowance to buy an action figure. She knows that when allowance day comes along he will have forgotten about the superhero he thought he couldn't live without.

A Mom will hold companies responsible for their actions. She knows that if you don't make your children pay for the window they broke when they catapulted a tennis ball into their neighbor's yard, and replace the flowers they trampled on when they climbed over the fence to retrieve the ball, it will happen again and again.

A Mom will make people clean up their messes. She knows that the threat of no Internet inspired her children to quickly clean up the fake blood they made for their horror movie that spattered from the bedroom to the backyard.

A Mom will promote nutritious food. She's seen her children try to jump out the second floor window with an umbrella on a sugar and caffeine high.

A Mom will walk the walk and talk the talk. She has heard her children repeat every swear word she has uttered, with feeling, to their grandparents. And she has seen them comfort each other with her own comforting words.

A Mom will demand affordable health care. A good medical plan saved her children after they tried to blow up the shed in the backyard, and she knows other families are not so lucky.

A Mom will praise and reward good behavior. She does not ever want to see her child splayed drunkenly across the cover of US Magazine.

A Mom knows that hiding in every adult is a child. She has seen her husband play air guitar in his boxers and still loves him.

A Mom does not expect to get rich, famous or re-elected; she is happy knowing that she has raised children who will make the world a better place.

Bari Carrelli lives in a lovely suburb of Los Angeles.