Twixt Deviltry and the Deep Boo-boo, See:

We walk a tightrope, between the devil and the deep blue sea, not to mention between the deviltry and the deep blue boo-boos.
For me, it’s a thin blue line in deciding how to police kids’ rambunctiousness without destroying their creativity or making them afraid to experience life.
Teenagers get themselves into mischief because they believe they are invincible. And they assume that we adults just issue willy-nilly warnings about potential perils and pitfalls because we are killjoys with one purpose: To spoil their fun.
Actually, all we are trying to do is make sure that they don't have to pay their dues for deviltry.



I have found that the seeds for the teenage attitude of discontent, and suspicion of all things adult, are planted during the formative years, as early as 4, for instance.
Call me paranoid, but I get nervous enough when one of my grandsons climbs a tree, or they all pile on each other in the yard, arms and legs flailing every which way but broken. Why should I worry so? After all, the grass provides a soft landing, and kids are resilient, so what could happen?
However, my skittishness skyrockets when the landing could be harder, such as on a tile floor. I envision split heads and gushing blood. Not that the blood would bother me (well, it is hard to get out of grout), but so far, I’ve accumulated a lot of baby-sitting days with no serious mishaps, in case OSHA ever starts tracking that statistic.
Thus, few people would blame me for admonishing 4-year-old Jack the other day, when he was whirling like a dervish on our tile floor: “Stop spinning like that!”
Jack, practicing his invincibility lines for those teen years, countered: “Why?”
“Because you’re going to get so dizzy spinning like a top that you’ll fall down,” I said, with the wisdom of my own and my kids’ pratfalls.
“How do you know?” he challenged.
Brilliantly, I replied: “I just do.”
Well, how would you counter that without making the kid afraid of his own shadow? Thus the fine line: trying to guide without scaring the bejabbers out of a kid, and an angelic side into him, so much that he’s afraid to do anything.



I would hate it if Jack fell down and broke his crown, and needed stitches to learn the lesson, but I don’t want to scar his psyche, either. And I hope I never use one of my dad’s tried-and-true lines: “That’s what you get,” or “I told you you’d get hurt.”
Oh, WAIT, I just remembered that I DID use those lines with my own kids. So I will tweak my resolution to say I hope I never use one of those lines with the grandkids. Oh, WAIT, I just realized that I already have.
Well, that’s because I have fears of my own to address. Topping the list is that I don’t want one of the lads to get broken on my watch.
Granted, their mom never has threatened me with concrete boots if one got hurt. But I also saw the look she gave me the day she came home and discovered that 2-year-old Luke had fallen into the lake while I was watching him. (That little narc Jack snitched on me before she was even out of the van.)
Thank God the water was just knee-deep to a grasshopper, so Luke was able just to stand up, startled and sopping. But I avoided the possibility of sleeping with the fishes.
I’ll turn a country song on its ear to underscore my point. My explanation arises from one of the old conundrums of music: Misheard lyrics, except that I misinterpreted them in the case of “Because of You.”
I always thought Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson were singing about a woman whose mother scared her from taking risks. It’s a natural mistake, if you ask me, based on this stanza:
“Because of you, I never stray too far from the sidewalk.
“Because of you, I learned to play on the safe side,
“So I don't get hurt.
“Because of you, I find it hard to trust
“Not only me, but everyone around me
“Because of you … I am afraid.”
The mandate I derived from the message was that I don’t want the boys to be afraid of things because of me. I want them to be free to make their own mistakes, but I want to help them avoid the boo-boos.
Then I saw Reba and Kelly singing the song in their video one day, and I realized my interpretation had been about as far off the mark as my golf game. (Well, nothing is that far off the mark, but you get my drift.)
Of course, I still am puzzled about whether the song is about a mom and daughter fighting over the same guy or a mom-dad-daughter thing or a mom-daughter-boyfriend or a dad-mom-daughter-boyfriend thing. The only clear thing, to me, is the guy in the white sport coat should be wearing the black hat (sorry I can't post it, but it's blocked).
The operative line for me in the song remains “Because of you … I am afraid.” I just don’t want the grandsons to grow up and say I’ve discouraged them from grabbing life by the horns.
So I’ll try to bite my lip and hope they don’t split theirs.