Rule #1: Don't take long showers too often. If you are in the shower too long, too many times in a row...my mother will turn the water heater off until you get out.
Rule #2: All the children in the extended family must perform (sing, play an instrument, read poetry, put on a skit such as "Scrooge", etc.) if they want to open their Christmas gifts. You can do something by yourself. You can team up with others. But you will do something. When you don't want to, you are told that you have to do this every year until you are an adult then you don't have to anymore. Once you turn 18, you realize this isn't true and the only real way to get out of this is by getting married (making you an official adult) or reproducing to bear the next generation of performing children. In short, the only way out is by having a child to replace you in the annual family Christmas talent show.
1 - Wow, I think your mom is very clever about turning off the water heater, that takes planning and precise execution. For my family we didn't have rules about the show, we had two bathrooms one with a shower and one with a tub and I don't know if both were ever being used at the same time. The shower was in the basement so because it was so uncomfortable to be in the basement anyway, no one would actually want to take long showers. If I saw just one spider in the basement bathroom I would run screaming and skip my shower for the day or wait a while until someone could kill it for me.
ReplyDelete2 - That's a pretty elaborate tradition, I wish my Christmases were as organized and communal. Although you would sort of know what would happen on Christmas there were some Christmases that were unpredictable. We would usually open one gift the night before and on Christmas Dad (honestly the best cook in the family) would cook a big breakfast, we'd listen to Christmas songs (the Motown edition, I love the R&B version of Christmas songs they put some soul into it!) and we'd open gifts... then we'd separate, go to our rooms and not talk to each other the rest of the day... Like I said your family gets Christmas a lot better than mine...