THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 31, 1995 TAG: 9503300148
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Can anyone explain to me where it is written that, when used by the parents of children under the age of 10, the word ``OK'' has to be followed by a question mark?
As in ``Benjamin, don't run into the street, OK?''
There is something about that sentence that bothers me. A lot.
Especially when it comes out of the mouth of a 33-year-old woman who has just watched her 3-year-old dart between an 18-wheeler with the words HAZ MAT on the side and a souped up Camaro driven by some guy with a loosely packed cigarette dangling from his mouth and a six pack on the dashboard.
Get real, mom. When you put that OK with a question mark at the end of your sentence old Benjie assumes he has a choice.
And since seeing tractor- trailers loaded with heaven only knows what stand on end, and hearing all those neat new words (most with fewer than five letters) is great fun, Benjie is 100 percent guaranteed to make the wrong one.
What's really frightening is that the use of ``OK?'' at the end of what should be a command issued to save the kid's life or the parent's sanity, is as epidemic as it is ridiculous.
I was in the grocery store the other day when a 2-year-old I'll call Alicia decided to practice ballet steps while perched with one leg on the seat of the grocery cart and the other on the handle.
``Don't do that, Alicia,'' her mother called from half an aisle away.
I steeled myself for the rest.
``OK?'' she added.
Alicia thought for a moment, decided that stopping what she was doing was not OK, tried one more leap and did a swan dive into the sharp prongs of the potato chip display.
Blood spurted, Alicia shrieked, mom ran to the rescue and the store manager turned pale. When last seen, mom was carting Alicia off to the minor emergency clinic, where, I suspect, she asked first to see a doctor and second to see the Yellow Pages. The part where all those guys who tell you ``If you're hurt, you should get a check'' are listed.
I'm not sure when this ``OK?'' business first started, but I do know that my kids' generation wasn't raised that way.
As I recall, the words most frequently uttered by my contemporaries were ``Stop that right now!'' frequently followed or preceded by ``If you want to live to grow up.''
Crude, maybe, but effective.
More than likely the ``OK?'' crept in when mothers started listening to the child raising experts of the 1970s and '80s who said that children should be given a choice.
Trust me, there was not one of those experts who advocated choices between safety and bodily harm or between acceptable behavior and that destined to drive everyone within earshot to the Prozac bottle.
The choices they were talking about were between carrots and spinach, blue socks and red, ``Cat in the Hat'' and ``Winnie the Pooh.''
Unfortunately, some parents carried the idea too far.
Then a lot of parents carried the idea too far.
Now, it seems that most of them do.
Then again, there probably were some parents throughout history who were into the ``OK?'' game.
Take Eve, for instance. Biblical rumor has it that she spent a lot of time yelling out to the orchard, ``Cain, dear, stop beating on your little brother, OK?''
Now we all know how that one turned out, a classic case of one too many choices being offered.
Mrs. Hun probably used the technique, too. ``Quit picking on those poor weak little countries,'' Attila. It's not nice to plunder and pillage, OK?''
Now that has a familiar ring.
How about Mrs. Grant?
``Look, Ulysses,'' I suspect she told him. ``Richmond's a nice city and I don't blame you for wanting to capture it. But, please, son, don't burn it down, OK?''
Even cows can be given too many choices. I'll bet my bottom dollar Mrs. O'Leary lived to rue the day that she said ``Quit it, Bossy, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, don't kick when there's a lantern around, OK?''
I could go on but I figure even those well meaning but misguided moms and dads out there have got the point by now.
In case they haven't, let me put it in terms my kids would have understood.
LISTEN UP, PARENTS. IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO COLLECT SOCIAL SECURITY, QUIT GIVING THOSE KIDS OF YOURS CHOICES THEY'RE NOT READY TO HANDLE!
You will please notice that neither the word OK nor a question mark appears at the end of that sentence. by CNB