Janelle Evans

I’m what you might call a morning person. Okay, some might consider it an insomniac. My body can’t seem to sleep beyond five hours at a time.

It’s a habit that started way back in my high school years. Those many 5am sport conditioning sessions turned into a 5am college cleaning job. Oh…the endless campus toilets I’ve scrubbed.

I pushed even farther into the morning when I began opening the doors of a pool at 4:30am, which turned into a 2am start time when I launched this writing career of mine.

Yep, lots and lots of short sleep times have ruined me, and this habit has spilled over into my children. Sleeping in around our house is getting up at 6am, even on Saturdays, except for my night-owl husband who thinks we’re all crazy.

Maybe he’s right, but I see it as the answer to the dilemma parents face while raising teenage children. Neither of us have to change our sleep patterns, because no matter how late or early our oldest needs to leave or return from high school functions, one of us will be up to take care of it. Ha!

Sometimes even when we follow instructions we can still make mistakes, as my oldest son found out this week.

He received a “Snickerdoodles in a box” gift. He was adamant about making these cookies by himself.

I had lots of baking of my own I needed to do in preparation for the Christmas holiday, so I shrugged my shoulders. “Okay, just be sure to follow the instructions.”

Working in the same space, I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was doing but I answered his questions as they came.

“Mom, it says mix. How do I do that?”

“Use my hand mixer.” I opened up a draw and handed him the beaters that went with it.

A few minutes later his mixing stopped and he asked where he could find another bowl.

I took one down from a high shelf and didn’t think another thing about it, until a plum of brown dust filled my kitchen. I pulled the hand mixer out of the new bowl I’d given him and turned off the spinning beaters. “What are doing?”

“Mixing the cinnamon and sugar; the instructions said I needed to do this in a separate bowl.”

“Oh, honey,” I said waving my hands through the falling dust. “Using a mixer on only dry ingredients makes a mess, especially an ingredient as light as cinnamon. You should have just used a fork or a spoon.”

“But the instructions said mix.”

I laughed. “I guess that what I get for telling you to follow the instructions. But next time, I hope you’ll remember that the word mix doesn’t always equal high powered equipment.”

A lesson I doubt he’ll ever forget as he wiped down every cupboard and counter-top in the joint. Airborne cinnamon sure can fly far.

Something happens whenever I’m around young adults. This overwhelming need to uplift, and teach comes over me. It doesn’t matter if they’re strangers. If I feel like the situation could use my help, I butt right in and give my two cents.

This past weekend, while spending time with the high school wrestling team, I found myself surrounded by young men. I listened to these young men banter back and forth about one thing or another as my teenage son warmed up for his next match below. After several sporadic interjections from me, the young man closest to me says “You seem to have an answer for everything.”

I laughed. “Well, I don’t know if I’d call them answers, but yes, I’ve got opinions on about every subject out there. I’m sorry I can’t seem to stop myself from sharing them. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Naw, I like it.”

Whew! My head gave a mental sigh of relief. Though I do wish to be helpful to every youth I meet, I don’t want to come off as a know-it-all mommy either. High school is hard enough. There’s no need for me to alienate those teammates my son will have to work with for the next several months.