As a child, I enjoyed watching my father mow the back lawn. As a prefiguration of my future spectator skills, rather than actively participating in the lawn-cutting process, I would watch from my bedroom window. From two stories above, I watched the entire thing from my own box-suite. I climbed onto the stool I used to climb into bed at night and pressed my tiny nose against the greasy window-screen. My three-year-old perspective made Dad seem so far away as he guided the reliable John Deere mower in straight rows. He would call up to me from below and scold me for leaning against the window screen. As much as it was his habit to mow the lawn, it was mine not to listen to his scoldings.
More often than I did not obey my father, I did not listen to my mother. To my father, I was difficult and stubborn. To my mother I was a tiny titan of terror. One of my first terrorist acts in fact, was to run about the house screaming because I refused to wear a crisp, white blouse and tartan skirt to church, not because I did not like either; but because I found my mother's pleadings and sighs of frustration amusing.
This, however, does not explain my first words. I came so frequently to hear "Uh-oh" because that is what my parents would say before they reprimanded me for my mischief. If the consequences were sift, they were equally as frequent. Apparently, I would have presented a problem to Pavlov's entire procedure. Instead of learning from the consequences of my actions, I merely regarded them as a price to pay to do what I wanted. I would gladly sit in time-out if it meant I could draw on the walls. Thus, in time, I came to utter "Uh-oh" as my first words in recognition of my wrong-doing and in anticipation of my sentencing.
