Stellar Parenting 101

I am a HUGE fan of Eddie Murphy's Delirious. In high school, my entire tennis team ditched school one day, all nine of us piled into my 914 and went to my house to watch a bootleg copy of the video. To this day my best friend and I will randomly shout out a line from Delirious and start a thirty minute barrage of Eddie Murphy quotes. We both have our personal favorites, but they all crack us up.

Every time the ice cream man comes through our neighborhood, I yell "ICE CREAM!!! ICE CREAM!!" at the top of my lungs and start running around the house frantically looking for my wallet. I've done it for so many years, that my two daughters adopted the habit without ever knowing it's origin. So one day not too long ago, we were waiting impatiently in the driveway for the ice cream truck to appear (we could hear it's bells and knew it was close), and I started doing the hip swaying, ice cream waving "I got some iiice creeeam..." monologue. It was very obnoxious, and at one point a neighbor walked by with his dog and just started cracking up. He knew.
My daughters eventually asked where I got the skit from, and being the stellar parent that I am, I started thinking, "Well, what would it hurt to let them watch JUST the ice cream truck monologue from Delirious?" So after the ice cream man left, we went inside and popped in the DVD (again, a hot copy, because you can't get it on DVD legally. But I digress...). Of course I raced past the first 15 minutes which, if you're going to be offended by the DVD, that's the part that will do it, and we watched the ice cream skit in hysterics! But while scanning the DVD, I came across the Michael Jackson impression, and it IS hysterical, so again I thought, "Well, what would it hurt...?" Then the Elvis impression, the Bathtub scene (where Eddie ends up with GI Joe up his ass :), Aunt Bunny falling down the stairs (who can forget "Goonie Goo Goo?"), and OF COURSE...The Family Cookout!!! Why would I want to deprive my girls of such classic comedy, even if they are young and incredibly impressionable?! I think it's just good parenting! So in return for my innovative approach to raising children, and sharing an integral piece of my own history, I now have a ten year old who does a killer Elvis impression (including the "Thank you, thank you very much!" while waving away an imaginary fart), and a fourteen year old who, every time she and I have a discussion that's getting WAY too serious, points her finger at me and yells, "I know you're seven! I know you're seven! But you're gonna be a seven year old, no-home, walking-the-dog mother f*&%er!!"

Stellar Parenting 101.