Parents Will Relate a Little Too Much to These Spring Break Memes
Updated April 23 2019, 1:55 p.m. ET
You love your kids. You want to soak up every precious moment because the moment you turn around they'll be grown-up. And yet, time seems to slow down as soon as schools breaks come along. You begin to count down the nanoseconds until they're back in the care of the staff and faculty who keep them alive and learning while you're at work.
At least you can take some small comfort in the fact that you're not along. Countless other moms and dads are right there with you — and some of them are very, very funny. Because if you can't laugh you'll have to cry, here are nine spring break memes and tweets every weary, annoyed parent can relate to.
1. Parenting really ages you.
You start out the break a golden lion and by the end of it, you're haggard, your hair's gone gray, and you've only got one hand. And that's if your'e lucky.
2. Bend the knee.
How does it look like the kids were today? Unless you're asking this with a very sympathetic face while pouring a glass of wine and simultaneously giving a foot rub, never ask this question of a stay-at-home parent during spring break.
3. At least you can torture them back as they get older?
One of the secret delights of parenting is forcing your kids to do chores. In terms of relative pleasure, enforcing chores during vacation is the parenting equivalent of heroin.
4. No "mommy can I" before 9 a.m., please.
Before kids, having to interact with other humans before coffee is tough. After kids... well, it's really a miracle any time a parent smiles sweetly at a 5-year-old yammering on about literally nothing at the butt-crack of the day.
5. It's important to keep the bar low.
There's a reason kids are so cute. Scientists suggest it's an evolutionary advantage, because when things are cute we want to care for them instead of murder them, and the desire to murder a kid rises exponentially each day of spring break.
If they weren't so adorable, we'd behave like some animals in the wild do toward the kids that annoy them. We'd eat 'em.
6. READ A BOOK.
When I was a kid, my mom would say "only boring people get bored" in response to any complaints about having nothing to do. If you're used to the kids being in school and having faculty dedicated to keeping them occupied every minute of the day, spring break can really drag on, for both parents and kids.
7. Remember when spring break was fun?
You faintly recall parties, beaches, drinks-a-plenty, but it's like a fever dream now. With kids, the drinks are all in sippy cups, and instead of the feel of sand between your toes, you get the constant piercing sting that comes from stepping on Legos.
8. Teachers should be millionaires.
Not only do they enrich our kids' minds and keep them engaged and busy all day, five days a week, but they do it for a pittance and pay for their own supplies. If legislators truly want to push for more funding to pay teachers better, they should 100 percent time those bills to hit the floor the day after spring break.
9. But eventually, they do go back to school.
And your excitement over that will eclipse any joy they felt when break began. It's not that you don't love spending time with them. It's not that you don't want to sop up every precious moment. It's that you're so very tired, and now you need a vacation from their vacation.
