My mother used to keep my sisters and I in line at the dinner table when misbehaving or eating messily by wondering aloud “what would the Queen think?”
Not that she was especially a monarchist, but she used this sword of Damocles over us for years until we started using it back on her. What would the Queen think, indeed, of mother’s tendency to “effuse”, shall we say, down in her computer/sewing room? Using a fork in the wrong hand pales in comparison with intruding on her environment when she’d been down there for an hour or so…
However, her threat of regal intervention gained some serious and unexpected traction one day when my older sister Jennifer came home from a Youth Orchestra outing one day to declare that holy crap she actually had met the Queen (if only to answer a question about what was printed on her T-shirt). My younger sister and I looked at each other and silently re-appraised our our Mother’s monarchical remonstrations. Whoa. Could it actually happen? Could the Queen really stop by at some foggy point in the future?
My three year old daughter provided the answer to this question at dinner last night. Being a product of my parents and prey to the same vague punitive appliances, I had begun some time ago to raise the hoary spectre of a regal visit and its implications to my own two children. My threats of what the Queen would think of their eating habits have precisely the same effect on them as they had on me, except that our 6 year old has learned to roll his eyes, something I didn’t dare do around my parents until I was well into university.
So last night Finn, the three year old, was consuming food with her fingers, despite the availability of a perfectly good fork next to her elbow. I waved the idea of the Queen vaguely in her direction to null effect. Carrie attempted to draw the possibility further into the light by suggesting her Royalness was coming tomorrow to shake up the wee tot.
Parental lesson number 3251, never underestimate the guile of a 3 year old:
” She’s not coming tomorrow, she’s already here. I am the Queen.”
And with that she scooped up some more rice in her smart little hand.
Who could argue with her?