A mother is checking out, and her little girl, maybe three years old, is toddling about touching everything she finds interesting.

Mom: “Don’t touch that display, [Girl]. You’ll knock it over and ruin it.”

The little girl waddles over to me instead and beams a huge smile up at me.

Little Toddler: “Mommy has a vagina!”

Me: “Uh…”

Little Toddler: “Mommy said I crawled out of it and ruined it!” 

Mom: *Sighing, to me* “That’s not the only thing she’s ruining.”

I know some think cats are untrainable, but I disagree. Back when I was a teen, living with my parents, I trained their cats with many commands. I had different calls to summon them for food, for offers to pet them, and for lap time, and one even came to her name. They knew what they were allowed to climb on and eat and listened when I told them to get down from something, and they generally were excellent cats.

One day, I had a small plate with some snack food sitting on the living room table. One cat walked up to it, which I didn’t think much about since I trusted him to obey the rules and leave the food alone. But then, he started batting at the edge of the plate.

Me: “What are you doing, you crazy cat?”

Dad: “Oh, you haven’t seen his new strategy yet?”

Me: “‘Strategy’?”

Dad: “Yep, he’s a smart one. Just watch and see.”

The cat continued to bat at the plate for a minute until he hit the raised outer edge hard enough to tilt the plate toward him, causing a piece of bologna to fall off the plate. The cat immediately grabbed it and ran off.

Me: “[Cat]! You know not to steal food!”

Dad: “Hey, don’t yell at him. He’s following the rules.”

Me: “How is that following rules?”

Dad: “You taught him that food that was on a plate was off-limits. He didn’t eat any food off of a plate, did he? He only ate food that had fallen to the ground, which has always been fair game.”

Me: “After he knocked it down!”

Dad: “Not his fault if you didn’t make rules about batting plates. He’s following the rules exactly as you taught them. [Cat] should have been a lawyer.”

I was skeptical of my father’s analysis at first, but I saw the cat try this trick a number of times later, and he really did seem to believe he was allowed to eat things only after he knocked them to the floor. Of course, now that I knew of his attempted loophole abuse, I made sure to teach him that it was not allowed. Eventually, we were back to being able to leave food unsupervised.

Or at least, we were until I left for college. Four years later when I visited my parents, two cats were begging for table scraps, a third was meowing incessantly for his daily tithe of wet cat food, and all three would climb onto anything they wanted and eat any food they could steal off of plates. Apparently, the man who cheered on a cat for bending the rules ended up with cats who didn’t feel they needed to obey the rules anymore. You get the behavior out of your pets that you encourage, good or bad.

My late grandfather was a dentist, and he told me about a particularly difficult patient he had back in the 1970s.

[Kid] was ten years old, and the entire practice dreaded his visits. When he appeared for an appointment to have some cavities filled, he entered the room with a look of defiance on his face, and my grandfather decided he just was not in the mood.

Dentist: “Get in the chair. I’m not going to play with you today.”

Kid: “No! And you can’t make me!”

Dentist: “Now!”

Kid: “I’m gonna take off all my clothes!”

Dentist: “Yeah, go right ahead.”

[Kid] stripped down to his underwear and folded his arms.

Dentist: “Now get in the chair!”

[Kid] grabbed the waistband of his underwear in a silent threat to pull them down.

Dentist: “I double-dare you!”

[Kid] stripped completely naked.

Dentist: “Now get in the chair!”

The kid quietly got in the chair and cooperated throughout the entire procedure. However, while [Dentist] was working on him, he quietly instructed his dental assistant to take the clothes elsewhere.

When it was over:

Kid: “Hey, where are my clothes?”

Dentist: “You can pick them up tomorrow. Goodbye.”

Kid: “YOU CAN’T—”

[Dentist] marched the kid out of the room and into the hallway and locked the door behind him.

Ten minutes later, he predictably got a phone call summoning him up to the front desk. He was met by [Kid]’s mother who was standing surprisingly calm and almost smug, despite the fact that she’d just witnessed the door opening and her son walking butt naked into a waiting room full of people.

Mom: “He blackmailed you with his clothes, didn’t he?”

Dentist: “Yep, and I called his bluff.”

Mom: “He’s been doing that to me forever. Any time we’re in public and I tell him no, he’ll threaten to strip naked in front of everyone, and I always find myself giving in. Thanks so much.” *To [Kid]* “LET’S GO!”

And [Kid]’s mom marched him right out, through the medical clinic full of people, through the elevators, and into the parking lot.

[Kid]’s mom came by the next day to pick up his clothes and told my grandfather that when they got home, she didn’t allow that brat to get dressed there, either, and made him spend the entire day at home walking around butt naked and enduring teasing and jeers from his siblings.

My grandfather never had a problem with him from then on, and according to his mom, it was the last time he ever blackmailed her with his clothes again.

I related a particular story to my then-twelve-year-old daughter to illustrate a point that I thought she would appreciate. A few months later, on her birthday, my mom called to wish her a happy birthday. After they were done talking, my daughter handed the phone to me so we could chat.

Mom: “I was telling [Daughter] about [same story]. She said she really liked that and hadn’t heard it before.”

Me: “But I told her that a couple of months ago…”

Mom: “Well, remember: you’re her mom, and she’s a teenager now, so you’re stupid.”

She instantly changed my demeanor from mild indignation to laughter. Now that I’m not a teenager anymore: thanks, Mom!

In the late 1990s (before cell phones were widely used), my sixth-grade class went on a field trip to a couple of local museums. Our school was very small, and our class only had around twenty students, so instead of taking a bus, a few parents volunteered to drive everyone.

We spent a couple of hours at the first museum and then loaded up and travelled about twenty minutes to the second museum, which was showing an IMAX film related to our recent studies.

As my group was walking into the building, we saw one of the parent drivers jogging back to his minivan as fast as his chubby legs would allow. As he ran, he yelled back across the parking lot:

Parent: “WE LEFT MRS. [TEACHER]!”

Yes, we had managed to get every child and parent transported successfully, but we left our teacher in the parking garage at the first museum. Since we were in several vehicles, no one had noticed until we all arrived at the second location and someone realized she was missing. (Again, no cellphones to call for help.)

She did finally make it to the museum in time to head back to school with the rest of the group!