How to be an annoying parent...

I love annoying teenagers. I don't mean that I have a fondness for teenagers that are annoying, (although I love mine to bits and she can dwell towards the irritating end of the scale) I mean that doing things that embarrass or annoy my teenager is one of my favourite sports. Here is a list of the things that bug her most:-

1) Deliberate mispronunciation of favoured band names. One Erection is always funny as it is rude as well as wrong. And You Meat Six is just surreal, but still bugs her.

2) When she is trying to do portraits for her photography course,  photo bombing by adding strange objects is a sure fire wind up. For example :- place small plastic elephant on your shoulder which goes un-noticed until development. I think it's adds something to her art....

3) Dance in an embarrassing fashion. Even better if you can achieve it while there is no music playing, or if you attempt to 'Gangman Style' whilst not really knowing what it is, or while wearing just pants and a t-shirt and singing an impromptu 'where are my trousers?' song.

4) Wearing any clothes. They will all be wrong, either too fashionable, too unfashionable or too weird. Offer to be naked instead. That is still wrong. You can't win, so you may as well indulge your inner eccentric.

5) Insist repeatedly that her 'Snapback' is a baseball cap. Mostly because it is.

6) Threaten to tell her mates that she steals your pants when she has run out of clean ones on account of an inability to put her own in the washing basket.

7) Use internationally accepted Internet shorthand for example 'LOL'. Apparently it is uncool for me, as an old person, to use that sort of slang, tho she does deem it acceptable to use the word 'LOL' herself, out loud, in real life conversations.  I think that that  is the uncool behaviour as it gives me terrifying visions of a society devoid of proper laughter, with comedy gigs punctuated by synchronised utterings of 'PMSL' or 'ROFL', and babies first giggles replaced by tiny 'LOL' noises. Hideous.

8) Delight in telling stories from when she was small, which I find adorable but she finds humiliating. Here are two of them in brief:-

'Mummy, Mummy, Bumhole, Bumhole'
I panic about where bad language has come from, turn around to discover she is referring to the fact she can park her posterior perfectly in the concave door of the washing machine.
 

OR

                                                                  

The time when she had recently discovered the fundamental difference between girls and boys and I overheard this conversation she was having with a male friend of mine.

Her: " You've got a willy haven't you."
Friend in wary voice "Yes"
Her "That's because you are a boy. Do you know what I have got?"
Friend in even warier voice "No?"
Her "An electric toothbrush"

9) When I write blog posts about her..... Even when they are lovely.......(tho I have her permission to really!)

Am I mean? Or do you wind your kids up too?

Love Miss Embarrassing Cisco XXX