Conversation With No Words

I was out on the road today, in a residential area with speed bumps and lots of lights. Which meant we were going slowly, even though there wasn't a whole lot of traffic. I was coming down a really long, straight street - Lake Avenue, if you must know - and I glanced in my rear-view where I saw a woman, probably my age or a little younger, gesturing and talking. She had a determined look on her face, like she was really trying to get her point across but wasn't sure it was working. On the passenger side sat a kid, no more than fourteen I'm guessing, who had his chin to his chest and was glaring sullenly out the window, away from his mother. He didn't say a word the entire time they were behind me, he just stared out the window as his mother talked and lectured and pleaded and threatened.
   It was like watching Spanish language TV with the sound turned off. I might not have gotten the specifics, but the broad strokes of the conversation came through loud and clear. The poor kid was screwing up, probably in the same way over and over and over, and his poor mother was at the end of her rope with him. It could have been anything, schoolwork, drugs, maybe even not picking up his socks from the living room floor, but his mother had enough and was putting a stop to it.
   Been there. I recall enduring a twenty minute car ride with my mother lecturing me non-stop the whole way. I don't remember what I did - probably something stupid and dangerous that would likely have gotten me injured or killed if I wasn't so clueless - but the ride back was absolutely not worth whatever I'd done to get in trouble. Agony.
   Funny thing is, not only have I been on the receiving end of this talking-to, I have witnessed the same scene played out many times, in many countries. I've seen it with little kids in Japan, with uniformed schoolboys in England, with tour groups in the Vatican, in the market in Germany, and in Rundle Mall in Adelaide. It's universal. The mother talks, making her point with gestures and a firm declaration that she's not going to tolerate that behavior any longer, and the mortified child looks anywhere but at her, though usually at the ground or out a window.
   It's amazing to me how universal this is. I'm certain little Roman children got the same talking-to from their matres, and little ancient Greek kids who got a dressing down in the agora stared at the boundary stones wondering when she was ever going to stop talking.
   So ladies, don't worry about turning into your mothers, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's gonna happen, it happens to everyone.
   And, if it's any consolation, you're not turning into your mother, you're turning into your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother.