Not Getting His Way

Sometimes in life you don’t get your way. We have been told this since the first year we could talk, walk, go to school, since the beginning. Sometimes it does go your way and you get the guy, the house, the dream job, the new car, a family, whatever you see yourself wanting. Other times it ends up with you waiting in your room needing to use the bathroom while your mom and brother argue, one in the bathroom getting ready, the other on the couch on their phone. And that’s how my morning started off.

Let me start this off with the night before, I went to school, followed by work and then home to my room eating KFC and watching TV. Seemed like a pretty great night to me. I fell asleep around 9:30 where I woke up the next morning around 6. My alarm didn’t go off so my mom woke me up to take my puppies outside while they were patiently waiting at the top of the stairs in front of our baby gate. Excited to tell my mom about other things that went on in my class the previous day I went back upstairs where my mom goes into my brother’s room to wake him up. Usually she opens the door and saying “Time to get up,” and walks away, but this morning it was different. She walks in his room to wake him up and slams the door behind her. I didn’t think anything of it until they walked out and she made a comment about how she still was not happy about last night. Feeling like I missed out on what happened the night before since I was at work I was highly confused. Did I also do something? I walked out of my room heading towards the bathroom to finish getting ready when the entire world seemed to fall and crash, my mom and my brother start going at it, my mom explains how the night before, around 11, when I was already sound asleep that she had walked into my brothers room to find out he was still playing video games with some friends on a school night. My brother has a curfew when it comes to video games so this exact thing doesn’t keep happening but it continues. My mom was only trying to explain to my brother that when she sets rules in the house that he needs to follow them. He ignores her, instead of listening he continues to sit on his phone drinking his iced coffee not caring about a single word she says. By this point I was back in my room to make it less awkward for them. When he finally decided to say something he made the situation worse ” Not to cut you off but it’s 6:40 and neither of us are ready.” He said as I was walking back to the bathroom to use it. My mom storms right by me and slams the door and then starts the shower. Me knowing that she was going to be in there for a while, I decided to make myself breakfast in the kitchen. I didn’t grab a drink knowing that if I did I would have had to use the bathroom even more. It was silent as I ate my food on the couch. When my mom was finally done showering she tried to talk to my brother, as she stood in the bathroom. Still I knew I had to stay patient to wait and not push through while she was still mad at my brother, that way she would not be mad at me as well. My brother continued to ignore her so she walked off, opening up the bathroom for me to go. After some silent minutes we left for school and went on with our day.

Later that night my mom pulled my brother off to the side to talk where they figured things out and moved on. I’m proud of myself for not getting involved, even to stick up for my mom, and for being patient and putting my wants of getting ready for school onto the side, because if I didn’t, my mom would have been mad at the both of us and maybe things would have gotten worse. That is why patience, even for small things matters.

Featured image: “Christmas” by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0