"Hello, dears." " Hey, Ma." " Hey." "Robert, have you and Amy set a date for the wedding?" "Here we go." "Look, Ma, we haven't even worked up the nerve to tell her parents we're engaged." "What are you waiting for?" "For them to die." "Raymond, don't say that." "That could take years." "What are you watching?" "A movie." "Nope." " Hi, Daddy." " Hi, Daddy." "Hey, guys!" "Hey!" "Oh!" "Tickle monster!" "What's up?" "Daddy, we're going outside, okay?" "All right." "Don't throw rocks." "Wait wait wait." "Did you two clean your room?" "Daddy said we could go outside." "Oh, nice try." "That room is a disaster area, and I asked you two to clean it half an hour ago." "Maybe they can go outside and finish up a little later." "No, Ray!" "What are you doing?" "You two get upstairs and clean your room right now!" "Mommy's mean!" "Ray, can I speak to you in the kitchen for a minute?" "Ma, can I go outside?" "Ray, I want to talk to you." "Hi, Grandma." "Hi, Grandpa." "Hello, dear." "Oh, Frank, doesn't Ally look nice in her Frontier Girl uniform?" "Great." "When's cookie season?" "In the spring." "I'll see you then." "Have a good time, sweetheart." "Have fun." "I'll be right there, sweetie." "I guess we'll talk later 'cause I have to take Ally to her meeting." "You make sure the boys clean that room!" "Oh, Debra, I'll clean up." "In fact, I'll give the whole upstairs a once-over." "And then the downstairs." "Thank you, Marie, but the boys can do it themselves." "Boys should play." "I hardly ever used to make Raymond tidy up." "I know, Marie, and thank you for that." "For Raymond, it was, "Don't worry, go play."" "What I got was, "Robbie, dust the ceiling!"" "So you know, my mom's got it all covered, all right?" "Ray, you make sure that the boys do it themselves." "And for once, don't be afraid to be the bad guy." "What do you mean?" "I mean, you always get to be Captain Good Times around here, and Mommy is the evil witch who shows up to spoil everybody's fun." "No, that's Ray's mommy." "Debra, when it comes to discipline, it's only natural for one of the parents to be the bad guy." "I was the best bad guy ever to walk the streets of Lynbrook." "These two knew not to mess with me." "When they were up to their usual monkeyshines, all I had to do was give 'em "the step."" "What's that?" " Take it easy." " Just relax." "End of monkeyshines!" "Wow." "He was good." "Nobody has to be the bad guy if you would just be firmer in setting limits for the kids." "But I know you." "You're worried if you do, they won't like you." " No no." " Yes." "Yes." "It's sad, really." "This obsession with being liked by everyone has now contaminated your child-rearing." "Do me a favor." "I've got an air freshener in the car." "Could you hang it off your nose?" "There's no reason for Raymond to be the bad guy when Debra's so naturally good at it." "I'm not good at it." "That was a compliment, dear." "When my boys acted up, all I'd have to say is," ""Wait till your father gets home."" "I would love to be able to do that, but whenever I say, "Wait till your father gets home,"" "the twins say, "Great." "He works for us."" "Yeah yeah." "Okay." "That's just the way it goes, honey." "How could you ever be the bad guy?" "Stop it!" "Who's the bad guy?" "Oh, we've touched a nerve." "Did not." "Shut up." "Touched a nerve!" "Touched a nerve!" "Hey, listen, if you'd just lay down the law once in a while, maybe the twins would respect you more." "They respect me!" "They do?" "When?" "When you tell them to get dressed and I find them watching TV with their pants on top of their heads?" "I'm a fun dad." "Yeah, well, you've got the "fun" part right." "What's that supposed to mean?" "You're a lousy dad." "I've got to take Ally." "I'll be back in a little while." "Come on." "You've seen me lay down the law, right?" "I've seen you lay down." "Now roll over." "He's such a good boy." "Guys, what are you doing?" "Playing." "You're supposed to clean up your room." "Five more minutes." "No." "No, not this time." "Not five more minutes." "Now." "Guys, I want you to clean up your room." " Five more minutes." " No" "Guys, I mean it." "Guys, I'm not fooling around, okay?" "All right, you know what?" "You know what?" "Listen, guys, I mean it!" "Stop, guys." "I want you to clean this room now." "Come on, guys." "I'm not fooling around!" "Stop it!" "Stop it, guys!" "I'm getting annoyed now!" "Stop it!" "Guys!" "Okay, no TV for a month!" "What?" "!" "You're going to clean this room, all right?" "And then I'm going to find more work for you to do, like take out the trash every day." "That's right." "Used to be my job." "Well, now it's yours, okay?" "You want to live here, I'm the boss." "I don't work for you, you work for me!" "What's all the yell" "No no no!" "I got it!" " Mommy!" " Daddy's being mean!" "And crazy!" "I'm crazy?" "You know what?" "Forget about cleaning up." "It's bedtime." "Say good night to mommy." "Go." "Get in bed." "Get in bed." "Come on, come on." "Lie down." "Lie down over there." "Go!" "Lie down." "Ray, it's noon." "Well, that's the new bedtime!" "All right, I'm not kidding around anymore!" "No more fun stuff!" "If there's any more screwing around, no TV, no dessert, no Christmas, Easter, 4th of July or Halloween!" "Ray, you're being ridiculous." "Night-night." "Lights out." "Just put your hands over your eyes and pretend it's dark out." "Come on, let's go." "Sweet dreams, gentlemen." "I suggest you sleep 'cause I'm filling the garbage tomorrow with the heaviest heaviest garbage!" "These two are hungry, so I made sandwiches." " Great!" " Hey!" "What are you doing?" "Nothing." "You work up an appetite laying down the law." "Ray just put the twins to bed and took away all their holidays." "Hey, all right." " Did you take away birthdays, too?" " l'm saving that." "Let's see how they do with the garbage tomorrow." "Very good." "Ray, listen to me. I know what you were trying to do up there, but that's not exactly what I meant by setting limits." "That is how you set limits." "I know exactly what I'm doing." "I think maybe you went too far." "I think maybe I went just right!" "Don't you think maybe" "Yes, I screwed up!" "I don't know what the hell I'm doing!" "Why'd you make me do that?" "What happened, Ray?" "I don't know!" "I just started yelling, and then I couldn't stop." "Why can't you stay the bad guy?" "Can't you see I stink at it?" "Aw." "Oh well, sweetie, it's just not your way." "I think you should go up and take back that punishment, and then you, Debra, you go up and give it out again." "Ray, come on." "You go up there and say you're sorry." "We'll get it all worked out." "Yeah." "Okay." "You're not going anywhere." "What?" "You back down now, you'll be their puppet." "You'll be a permanent party clown with bubbles coming out of your behind." "Come on, Frank, what Ray did was completely unfair." "Unfair is what kids remember." "Unfair is what keeps them on the straight and narrow." "Remember in high school how you used to whine about how unfair your 9:00 curfew was?" "Well, it kept you out of trouble now, didn't it?" "Like it or not, unfair works!" "Except that Ray would come home at 9:00, wait for you to fall asleep, and then sneak back out." "Raymond, is that true?" "No, it is not true, Marie." "It is manure." "He would always brag that he had the stairs memorized-- you know, which ones would squeak, which didn't." "And once he got down 'em, it was out the door for another night of bad judgment and questionable behavior." "Baloney!" "Ray knew what would happen if he blinked without my permission." "I had him shivering in his boots." "He knew if he lived in my house, he lived by my rules." "Sneak out!" "Ha!" "Actually, Dad, with your snoring, I could have marched out of there blowing a trumpet." "You little punk!" "So where would you go?" "Anywhere-- parties, Bernie's house." "Well, his mother's getting a call." "Sometimes I just took the Valiant for a drive." "You took my car?" "I'd always refill the gas so he'd never know that it was gone." " lt was kinda brilliant." " Yeah, yup." "And by the way, Robert did it, too." "Never!" "Yes, oh yes!" "Once, we snuck out to go to the Jethro Tull concert, and he stole a bottle of peppermint schnapps from your liquor cabinet!" "He's lying!" "Yeah, I know he is 'cause I had that cabinet padlocked." "That's why he had to inch it away from the wall and pop out the back panel." "You drank?" "You popped out the back panel?" "And after the concert, Robert was so schnockered, he wanted to fight anybody who didn't agree that "Bungle in the Jungle" was the best song ever written." "That's a great song... but this is lies!" "Then, I remember the next morning he threw up in the living room, and you wanted to know why the house smelled like mint vomit." "You told me you had a bad candy cane." "Oh, Frank, our sons are juvenile delinquents!" "Yeah?" "Well, you know that time we went to the Poconos?" "He had a girl in his room." " Oh, yeah?" " Raymond!" "Well, first of all, I was 25." " And nothing happened." " You told me something happened." "That's right, I told you something happened." "Nothing happened." "I knew it." "You should have sent her to my room." "Yeah, like you would know what to do." "I know plenty." "Yeah, you know." "You know how to throw up." "You throw up!" "Worst song ever written-- "Bungle in the Jungle."" "I'll fight you right now!" "Quiet!" "Be quiet!" "He started the whole thing!" "I still got it!" "Actually, Frank, you obviously never had it." " What?" " Wake up!" "You spent their childhood being a dreadful goon, and all it did was make them want to sneak out of the house." "Maybe they wanted to get away from you." "That's why I sneak out of the house." "Don't you dare try to turn this around." "You insisted on being the disciplinarian." "You're the one who said to me," ""Don't hug them so much." "You'll make them soft."" "Obviously, I should have never stopped hugging them!" "Oh!" "I am so sorry I let this crazy man loose on you." "Stop hugging them!" "No, Frank." "That's what parenting is-- love." "You just love 'em." "No matter how many bad decisions they make, no matter how many times they don't listen to you, you just keep loving and hope that maybe someday that love will make them realize how much they hurt you." "And you wonder why I drank the schnapps." "You know what?" "I'm just gonna tell the twins they can do whatever they want because nothing works." "Oh, come on, Ray." "It's not that simple." "What?" "All his rules ever did was make me good at getting around 'em, so maybe we don't make so many rules." "Look, my parents made rules, but they took the time to explain the reasons for the rules." "And there was mutual respect between us, and maybe that's why I never felt the need to sneak out of the house or go joyriding in their car." "Yeah." "Yeah, you're right." "You never felt the need to do that, but you did find the need to go to Mardi Gras when you were in college." "Ray." " And at the parade..." " Ray." " you took your top off." " Ray!" "Oh my God!" "It was nothing." "In college, everybody's a little... lt was college." "I was finding myself." "You found yourself on page seven of "The Daily News"" "with your boobs out!" "Ray!" "Holy crap!" "You mean, like... topless?" "In "The Daily News"?" "I was not topless." "They put a black bar over the exposed area." "I hate those." "It was spring break." "It was a momentary youthful indiscretion." "That ended up in the paper." "How could you do that, Debra?" "Come on, it is no big deal." "It was college." "Not a big deal?" "Debra, in a few years, Ally will be in college." "But Ally would never do anything like that because we will teach her that it is not right to do things like that, and..." "Oh, boy." "That's the thing, all right?" "Now, what are we gonna do?" "Come on, I managed to sneak out to any party I wanted, and I had Marie and Benito Mussolini as my parents!" "And even though you had good parents, you still whipped off your shirt in front of a bunch of drunks for a handful of beads!" "Whoo!" "No matter what we tell Ally and-and-- and the other ones... aren't they just gonna do what we did?" "Or worse?" "You need to build a cage!" " Well, we need something." " All right, don't panic." "We've got to have a plan here, okay?" "How are we gonna control these kids?" "What are you asking me for?" "Because it's got to be you." "I can't even put their PJs on." "You think I'm gonna be able to take away beer and cigarettes?" "Yesterday Ally asked me if she could buy a miniskirt." "Oh, crap!" "You've already lost!" "You tell Ally the answer is no." "No skirts of any kind." "Pants-- snow pants!" "You can't win." "No matter what you do, they're still gonna grab your booze and go to a concert." "No concerts!" "Shirts can come off at concerts, too." "I gotta start a band." "Guys, it's okay." "You can wake up now." "Sit up, guys." "I want to talk to you." "Michael, come over here." "Come on." "Listen, guys... I said something before that was pretty harsh." "But, uh, I said it, and I'm sticking by it." "Okay, you understand that?" "I'm not backing down." "So if you think Daddy's a party clown" ""Look at the bubbles coming out of his heinie"-- you can just forget about it." "But... I might have a deal for you guys." "You want your TV back, and holidays, and staying up until it's dark out?" "Okay, well, I can make all that happen if you just promise me one thing." "Okay?" "Just promise me you'll obey everything Mommy and Daddy tell you from now until you're... 60... five-- 65." "Okay?" "That seems fair." "Deal?" " Deal." " Deal." "All right, come here." "Now, listen, guys, I don't want you to think that I'm an idiot and I really believe that we've got a deal here." "Your mother and I have been talking, and we know that you're gonna get older and you're gonna do things, and we know there's nothing we can do about it." "But, guys, if you do, make sure... we never find out about it." "We don't want to know." "Listen, guys, the only reason we want you to do what we tell you is because we love you." "Okay?" "We love you, too, Daddy." "Can we go outside now?" "Yeah." "Okay." "No, wait." "You've got to clean your room." "No, guys, you've got to clean your room!" "Guys!" "You've got to clean the room!" "Hey, Ma, you busy?" "I'm glad we talked that out today." "Yeah." "Me too." "I guess all we can do is love 'em and set a good example." "Yep." "And as far as me and you go, I think we need a vacation." "Oh, I'm all for that." "Where should we go?" "Actually, I was thinking about Mardi Gras." "Ow!"