‪#‎OnThisDay‬ in 1920, the U.S. Post Office announces that children can no longer

[hunter]

7. My pain-in-the-ass teenage grandpa was sent off to an uncle in the big city of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I don't know if he was sent parcel post or his mom sucker punched him just hard enough to land him there. Probably the sucker punch; costs less than Parcel Post and consistent with a double dose of Scots-Irish-Catholic draft dodging and impressment awol anarchy.

My immigrant ancestors all landed in the Americas by various underhanded schemes and then ran like hell into the wilderness. My last immigrant ancestor was a mail order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't much like sharing a husband with other women so she ran off with a monogamous man and homesteaded land that's still about as far from a MacDonald's or Wal-Mart as you can get in the 48 states. That's a debt that will never be repaid, and may be the reason Mormons never show up on my doorstep.

Pre-teens in our family are easy to get along with, even though they really do know everything. But once puberty hits they get belligerent about it.

I didn't quit high school and I wasn't kicked out of college twice because I was stupid. It was because I knew I was right.

There were a few days raising my own kids I'd have been happy to send them off to a relative parcel post.

As adults my kids still know everything, but they've developed much better, truly adult, skills dealing with those of us who do not.