I stopped reading The Onion a couple of years ago, but I'm glad I restarted today and found "Adults Have Misclassified Me As A Handful":
Once you get a reputation for being a handful, everything you do is automatically cast in a negative light. Suspicious glances meet you every time you even think about touching the frame of your younger sister's playpen, and God forbid you come within five feet of a houseplant. You have, in effect, already been accused, tried, and sentenced for actions you have not even taken. From then on, anything you do is retroactively construed as "problem behavior."
I'm pretty sure that if Connery could type, he'd have a similar take on our labeling him as a drama king. I thought this was particularly brilliant:
Not unlike the proverbial infant strapped into a bouncy-bouncy chair, I am at the mercy of the adult world's judgment, a world in which any protest on my part is met with the suggestion that maybe somebody needs a nap. As if a few minutes of lie-down sleepy-time could even begin to solve a problem this systemic and pervasive!
It reminds me that I have, more than once lately, used string of logic that I can still remember my parents using against me. And I remember hating it so, so much. It's only now that I see its brilliance. When Connery gets upset because he doesn't want to go to bed--even when he's clearly tired--sometimes it escalates into tears and tantrums. Much of the wailing will center on how he is not tired and should not, therefore, have to go to bed. But I have the ace up my sleeve: If you're not tired, my son, then why are you crying? If you're crying, you must be tired!
I can see the gears whirring in his head just like mine used to: No, Mom, I'm crying because I'm not tired and I don't want to go to bed and yet somehow you've tricked me into crying so that you can say it proves I'm tired. Curse you and your logic, woman!
Sometimes it's good to be the grownup.