Parent, Grand, Child
When a man and a woman love each other, or at least when the guy likes how the girl looks in a mini skirt and she thinks his scooter is bitchin’, they do very, very bad things to one another and end up paying the price with a baby. It cries, pees, costs lots of money and forces them to sell their scooter and look ugly in mini skirts, but still they manage to grow to love the thing and feel the need to protect it.
As years go on, it becomes more capable and their protection is less and less necessary. Where they once were responsible for making sure it didn’t swallow knives, eat poisonous rocks or drink directly from the gasoline pumps, now the child can jump out of trees, flip over their handlebars and go on dates with the opposite gender. All the while, parents are there to stop all of the fun. “No!” is a parents single most powerful weapon, for the first several years anyway, until teenagers realize they don’t have to listen. But in the meanwhile, parents say “No! Don’t butter your own bread, I’ll do it!” “No, you can’t watch TV!” “No, chocolate is bad for you, soda is bad for you, milk is bad for you, the environment is bad for you!”
Parents worry their heads off and the majority of children grow up with all ten fingers and all ten toes. Parents see this.
Children eventually become parents, and parents grandparents. The new parents fill the same roles that their own did, even with all of the swearing and promising to the sun gods that they won’t. And the grandparents become the opposite.
“Yes! Grandma’ll buy you a TV!” “Sure, Grandpa loves to give kids chocolate coated soda cans!”
The grandparent is the end result of the realization that parenting is taken too seriously.
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