When our two oldest girls, Shannon and Sandi, were in High School I was pretty certain that neither would live past their eighteenth birthday. If they didn’t kill each other there was a very good possibility I would.
When they were little they were cute but in their teens they were always fighting about something - usually clothes.
One Saturday afternoon while their mom was gone for groceries I was reading in the family room and WWIII began - over a pair of jeans. And they weren’t even new! Just some only torn, smelly, frayed, blue jeans.
I counted to ten thousand, backwards, three times - just hoping it would all just go away or that Donna would come home. It didn’t and she didn’t so I decided I would have to act.
Their punishment would have to be one that they would remember for a long time. And the fact is that they do remember - it comes up every Christmas and family get-together. I make sure of it!
I made Shannon and Sandi sit on two kitchen chairs, facing each other, about one foot apart. Then I set the timer on the oven for fifteen minutes and told them that they had to look at each other - in the eyes - while smiling for the entire time.
They didn’t think that their punishment was too bad until I said, "If you look away from one another or quit smiling, even for a second, I’ll reset the timer we’ll start over."
Both Shannon and Sandi looked at me like I was insane and I probably was a little crazy right then.
Anyway, I stood there in the kitchen and watched them grinning at each other until the corners of their faces began to ache and the anger in their eyes melted. The last five minutes they kept their eyes open and grins up with their fingers. Both faces were contorted into a mask of weird gleeful surprise.
When buzzer on the oven sounded and they were released from the grinning prison it was with a solemn prophesy. I told them that someday they would be friends and they would
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