I lived with my parents through college.  It was a good life, basically easy.  However, in return for my room and board, I was expected to do some household chores for my mother.

My father never asked us to do any specific chores, but we were his gophers.  We had to run out to the mailbox to get the Sunday paper.  He’d ask for “2 fudgey bars” and we ran out to the garage freezer.  My sister, brother and I fetched thousands of cans of Diet Mt. Dew, hundreds of oranges, kleenexes, socks and ringing phones.

He told us it was a fair trade off, and he was probably right.  I see it now.

Recently I got my own gopher and I see that the circle of life is now complete.  Geetle absolutely LOVES doing “chores.”  Because she is only 4, her chores are more of the gopher-type.  I give her a Wal-Mart bag of toiletries and she drags them into the bathroom.  She fetches my purse from the closet.  She will fling herself on the ground and search under the couch for the missing remote.  She will even run out to the lawn and bring in the paper (while I watch from the porch).

My dad was right, it is a pretty fair trade off.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s a lot easier to be the gopher than the gopher wrangler.  Beagooddad and I work pretty hard to keep this show running and the least the kids can do is get the ketchup from the fridge when we ask.