No, I don’t think rehabilitation centers are stupid. They are needed in certain situations, I just think things have gotten out of hand. Screw around on your wife with fourteen other women? You must be a sex addict. Answer: Rehab. Get drunk in public, run naked down the Sunset Strip? Rehab. Cause a disturbance on an airplane because your hand towel in first class wasn’t hot enough? Rehab. I have a plan to make me some money. I am going to open up a new center, a Responsibility Rehab. Evidently people today were not raised to accept responsibility for their own actions. I am the woman to teach them. Why? Well, I am a baby boomer raised right by good parents. This is what all of these people seem to be missing, so we need to go back and start from scratch again….and we will do it at Responsibility Rehab….for 30k a month.
Patients will be called “kids” and will be assigned to a different house on the property. The “counselors” will be called Mom and Dad and they will oversee four kids per house.
The treatment plan will be simple. Mom and Dad will treat the kids as I was treated growing up… like many of my generational brothers and sisters. There will be immediate consequences for failure to abide by the program. The kids will be held accountable for their own actions…they will be punished for misdeeds, but also praised and shown love for good behavior. Mom will constantly shout things at each kid as thoughtful statements of encouragement, for example:
1. shut that door, what were you raised in a barn?
2. eat that food, kids are starving in China!
3. do you want me to give you something to cry about?
If a kid is found with alcohol, cigarettes, or gawd forbid, drugs in the house…the Mom will chase them with a fly-swatter and beat their behind until they have grill marks on their ass. Lesser infractions will be handled with work assignments like dusting furniture, washing dishes and scrubbing toilets. No sex will be tolerated in the house…not even between Mom and Dad.
There will be one telephone land-line, no cell phones, computers or iPods in the house. The land-line will be on a telephone stand in the hall with a very short cord. The person using the phone will have to stand near it or sit on the floor while using it in short conversations…it will be rotary dial, of course. There will be one TV per house with four channels….3 local and PBS. Each house’s Dad will select the TV programming to be watched every night…expect a heavy rotation of re-runs of westerns and Lawrence Welk. The city newspaper will be delivered to the front porch of each house by 3pm each day by a guy named Pete.
Food will only be eaten in the kitchen or dining room. Dinner will be served at 6pm and all six members of the house shall be seated and ready. The inhabitants of the house will engage in a conversation at dinner and genuinely act interested in what the other parties have to say. Everyone will contribute in clean up after each meal and express thankfulness for the food.
Men will be educated on how to properly show respect to women…how to talk to them, interact with them. Women will be taught how to love and respect themselves…to know that anything is possible with their life if they work hard. Education and goal setting will be drilled into the kids minds every day. Self-improvement will be a topic of discussion most days….that and community service. The kids will be taught to look for ways to help others…..to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated.
Gay kids will not be treated any differently than straight kids. Diversity will be welcome and each kid will be honored for the individual they are….the house will be color-blind.
If the kids are bored after their study time in the evenings, they can go out in the yard and play touch football….or four square. The kids in one house will meet and interact with kids in the other houses. Dad will call the kids back into the house every night promptly at 10pm for bedtime.
No kid will be able to buy anything on credit. If you don’t have the money to pay for something in your pocket or in the bank….you can’t have it…period. No profanity or urban street language will be tolerated. Kids will address elders using Sir or Ma’am only.
No pants hanging down to your knees will be tolerated….Mom will tell you to pull up your pants just once…then she will start counting. If a Mom gets to THREE…she will commence chasing you around the house again with the dreaded fly-swatter. Special Note: the fly-swatter is a 60s model with a wire mesh, not plastic.
At the end of 28 days, each kid will be released into the general population that is our society. Hopefully they will have learned something and will change their ways. If they have a relapse the following steps will be taken. First, Mom will call them every day and nag them into acting correctly again. If step one doesn’t take care of it,…she will write a letter explaining that you were raised better than how you are acting. Finally, if all else fails….the “family” will initiate a loving intervention…that hopefully works. A remedial trip back to the family home may be necessary after these steps are taken…but most kids will do anything to avoid this from happening.
A return trip to Responsibility Rehab will include boring trips to a senior counsel’s house…or “grand-ma” as we like to call her. Each trip will include six hour lectures on being a good citizen….broken up by meals with over-seasoned food and massaging gma’s aching feet. For recreation the kid is allowed to mow grand-ma’s yard or attend a church bingo session with her. After 28 days of lectures, bad food, and smelling like moth-balls…most kids are rehabilitated.
So the next time you see an adult acting like an idiot on Entertainment Tonight or TMZ….pass the word about my idea. I have a feeling this thing could be a cash cow…true job security for me and my group of “family” members. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the motto of Responsibility Rehab, “Don’t make me start counting!”
Dyke in the Heart of Texas 
it was like you were peeking in on my life (haha) My dad likes to say that I am “like a baby boomer” because I was raised in the former canal zone in the Republic of Panama. I grew up exactly the way you described, except until I was 8 or 9 the television station did not come on until after 4:00 p.m. I think you could make a killing! 🙂 Sign me up I would love to be one of the “moms’!
it’s like you grew up on my street except all the parents whistled for the kids to come home and we all knew their different whistles. In the summer we could stay out until the street light came on. Thanks for the memories! Oh, I’d also like to apply for a job although I can’t whistle like my mom.
All of it so true. But we must resist the urge to look at things with rose colored glasses. “We didn’t have a school bus. We walked through five miles of snow to get to school. And Elvis is the sign of the end of civilization as we know it.”
But some common sense would be welcome. And damn Tiger anway. He never called me!
Love this! The patients might even find that they LIKE living like this!
AMEN SISTA!!!!!!!!!!!! Except now, CPS is called because someone has told the kids they don’t have to take this kind of treatment and we parenets are taking away their “civil rights “and their “freedom as an American citizen”. That came out of the mouth of an 11 year old. That was a definite,”What would Jewel Dean do?” (aka momma) moment. Where’s my damned fly swat?
You would excel at such an endeavor. No one would mess with a “mama” like you!