Not to Nag...

The Prude has been experiencing a vaguely unsettling feeling.  The same feeling she had when she drove home from the grocery store in an empty minivan while her bagged and paid for groceries waited patiently in their carts at the drive-through pick-up station.  Or when she packed up beach gear, suntan lotion, sand pails and 2 children and left the beach.  The Prude has 3 children.

This is the niggling some folk experience come April 16, when they still have money in the checking account and try to remember why April 15 sounds so familiar.

In other words, The Prude has forgotten something.

She has discovered that if she stands in one place long enough and breaths shallowly, the memory will return.  Blessedly, it arrived before hyperventilation set in.
She had forgotten …
THE LECTURE LECTURE- PART TWO!
And here it is:

THE LECTURE CODIFIED AND HOW IT DIFFERS FROM NAGGING.

A good lecture (and there is rarely such a thing as a bad lecture) includes the following components:
-how fortunate the wayward child is to have a parent who cares enough to lecture
-how if ________(fill in the blank) had had a mother who cared enough to lecture, _____ wouldn’t currently be sitting in a Turkish prison waiting to find out which, if any, of their limbs the judge would allow them to retain
-several reiterations of “Don’t sigh and/or roll your eyes. It just makes the lecture longer”
-a recap of the child’s wanton naughtiness, with expectations for improved future behavior
-a wrap-up that includes fervent, though stern, affirmations of the long-suffering parent’s love for the wayward child.

DO NOT let anyone tell you a lecture is akin to nagging.
Say the word ‘lecture’  Hear how the syllables extend themselves out so the tongue lingers on the vowels and caresses the consonants?  The word itself echoes all that is good about lectures.  They are to be savored as a fine delicacy.

Now say ‘nag’.  It is a short, bossy, almost staccato word.  It can be repeated an almost infinite number of times.  NAG, NAG, NAG.  Do this, stop that, you never, you always.
See?   But if you include all the stated lecture components, you can stand tall and strong against accusations of being a nag, and proudly proclaim:

“NO!  I AM A LECTURER!”