I am the mother of four and grandmother of six and I think that parent's mistakes are rather funny in a way.  Parents are human and no matter how prepared and loving a parent you might be, mistakes can happen to anyone.

Speaking of mistakes reminds me of the time Paul (my husband) took our youngest son to the video store to rent some movies.  I told Paul to get some cartoons for the kids and to pick up a made-for-TV movie called, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble,” starring John Travolta and Glynnis O’Connor for us to watch.  I repeated the name of the movie to him a couple of times because Paul forgets these things very easily.  I asked him if he was sure he would remember and he said, "Diane, I'm an engineer...we invented memories...in fact, I could even tell you how to spell the movie in binary!"  So off they went to pick up our movies.

When they arrived, our son went straight to the cartoon section while Paul searched for the aforementioned movie I had requested.  When he didn’t find it, he went to the counter and asked the boy working there if they had a movie called, "The Plastic Man in Bubbles."  The boy checked but could find no movie of that name listed in their directory.  Paul told them that they had to have it because it was new and the "grease lightning guy" was in it.  When the boy asked if he meant "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble," Paul started to get a little impatient and told him that he never forgets names of people or movies.  The boy then asked what it was about and who was in it.  Paul had never seen the movie, but didn't want to admit that at this point for some reason, so he said, "Well, besides Mr. Grease Lightning, it has Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, and it’s about a man that builds plastic bridges…and realizes that the whole earth is really a bubble…so he has to escape before it pops…and that’s when he builds a plastic escape pod thingy…and then he lives on the moon.”  The boy had no idea what movie that was and apologized for not being able to help.  Paul then said, rather loudly,  “that’s okay, we’ll just have to go see if the other video store has it,” hoping that that would spark feelings of embarrassment and humiliation in the hearts of the employees.

When Paul and my son arrived home later that night, I asked if he had found it okay.  He then proceeded to tell me what had happened.  I chuckled a little at the story, but then asked what he had rented.  He reached into the video store bag and pulled out a collection of Smurf cartoons, and a How-to video on building model bridges.  He said that it was the closest thing that they had to what he had asked for.  The ironic thing about this whole story is that there was a mix-up at the video store and inside the Smurf video case was a documentary about the Iwo Jima invasion.  We had sent the kids downstairs to watch their video while we watched ours and had no idea, until our youngest came up from downstairs and told us that his sister had thrown up on the couch.  When I went down to clean it up, I found that the documentary was on, my daughter was crying, and the two oldest were playing “guns” with two broken broom handles.

Paul spent the rest of the night explaining death and war to our children.  It was a long lecture that included some things that I thought were a little over their heads (i.e. complex combat maneuvers, artillery rounds, right and left flanks, menopause, ghosts, and Winston Churchill).  It was a lecture and memory that will stay with me forever I am sure.  Paul did apologize eventually for forgetting the name of the movie.  His intentions are always excellent, but…well, you know, I guess that’s all that matters, isn’t it?