Making demands and expecting change right now doesn’t work in the grown-up world

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Updated: November 27, 2011 12:35PM

I demand my children tell me how much they appreciate me and all I do for them. Constantly.

I demand that my children learn to put things back once they use them. Always.

I demand to look 34 again.

Then I demand to be hired for the news anchor job I didn’t pursue the first time around, because I was too busy taking care of children to go after such a thing. Obviously, I would have gotten such a job otherwise.

What I have to contend with is all so unfair.

I demand someone give me a million dollars.

I demand that my mortgage go away.

I demand to be remarried. Now.

What I have to contend with is all so unfair.

Yep, these are the things that I demand. I probably can find a lot of my friends who will demand many of these same things, and they could add more to customize their lists. Should we form a group and march for these demands? Make some signs? We can get angry that we don’t have just what we want — RIGHT NOW — and decide that it’s someone else’s fault, and they had better give us what we want. RIGHT NOW. Or else.

I don’t see why not. Apparently, we’d get lots of sympathetic respect from the news media and politicians for our “understandable angst.” I have angst. And I’d be glad to have it fully understood. I’d be really glad to make it all someone else’s problem and have all my demands, and my desires — reasonable and otherwise — met. This instant.

And I don’t care what it costs some mysterious, unnamed “them,” or how unfair it is to this “them” to make it all happen.

Oh, wait, this approach is not going to work. It shouldn’t work. Shoot, I completely forgot. I’m a grown-up. I guess it’s back to the real world for me, then. And all I can say is: Phew.

Scripps Howard