Horrible Stories I Told My Children

By R. A. Ellis

The real life Ellis family would have fit in living next door to the Addams Family.

In parenting, there is usually a right approach and a wrong approach to a given situation. Ron Ellis usually chooses the third way. You know, the one that’s funny.

Shocking, crazy, hilarious stories and situations for parents that follow the third way, and the people who love them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wyrd Goat Press
• Release date: Oct 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301940349

R. A. Ellis

Pen Name for Rory Miller, writer, lecturer and self-defense instructor.

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Horrible Stories I Told My Children

By

R. A. Ellis

Published by Wyrd Goat Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Wyrd Goat Press

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Kamila Zeman Miller

Illustrations by Kamila Zeman Miller

Table of Contents

Confession: I am a Terrible Father

Chapter One: Starting Early

Chapter Two: Where Do Babies Come From?

Chapter Three: Mother-in-Law

Chapter Four: Behavior Modification

Chapter Five: Crime and Punishment

Chapter Six: Silly Games

Chapter Seven: Miscellaneous

Chapter Eight: Bedtime Stories

CONFESSION

I am a terrible father. Very lucky, since the kids turned out to be fine people. But I did everything wrong. Too often, I made the Third Decision. C’mon-- you know. At every decision point in life, you have to choose: Do I do the Right Thing? Or the Easy Thing? That’s the angel and the devil on your shoulders right there.

Far too often I would listen to the other voice, the third voice:

What’s the funniest thing you could do right now?

Chapter One: Starting Early

It started early. Literally minutes after birth. I was holding this wet, squalling young boy. After 23 hours of labor my wonderful wife was exhausted.

Shhhhh, shhhh shhhh, I whispered to the little guy. You have to be quiet. Your mom is too weak to run and if you keep crying, the leopards will come and they will eat us all. You have to be quiet for your mom.

Ryan quieted right down, as if there was an ancestral memory of leopards eating mothers.

When his sister was born two years later, it worked again.

You can know a lot about a woman when you marry her and then find out a whole bunch more about the same but completely different woman when you have children. My wife, for instance, was very scientific. When we met in college she was majoring in Engineering Physics because, quote, The math in the regular physics class isn’t hard enough unquote.

I knew science was out the window when she found The List.

What’s this? she said, holding up The List.

I knew it was a trick question because The List was titled: ‘Experiments To Perform When We Have Our Own Children.’

It’s a list of experiments to perform when we have our own children, I said.

Really? There was a bewildering chill to her voice. The kind of chill that usually means that sex is not an option right now. Puzzling.

She tapped item #1. What, exactly, does ‘H2O slash O2 slash food hyphen addictions question mark’ mean? H20/02/food—addictions?

Ooooh. I knew that one would be a tough sell. I didn’t plan on doing that one without talking to you. It just occurred to me that there has never been an evidence-based study proving that people die of starvation or thirst or suffocation. We’ve never technically ruled out that maybe they are dying of withdrawals due to an addiction. So I thought if the kids were never exposed…

I didn’t like the way her color changed, so I shut up.

She pointed at the next item. Horizontal line cats hyphen magic question mark? Horizontal line cats—Magic?

"Remember that experiment where the psychologist raised the kittens in an environment with nothing but horizontal black and white stripes? When the kittens grew up, they couldn’t see vertical lines. That part of the