Spit'n'polish
I swore from an early age that I'd never, ever do what my mum used to do to me, which was to spit in a tissue ('moisten' as she called it) and scrub my mucky face in public.

Horrid! Yuck! The 'soggy sandpaper' dragging your face clean... The smell and feel of her saliva drying on my face...the humiliation! For the love of God, why couldn't she just lick my face clean like any other animal?

Possibly my earliest 'future-parental' value: When I'm a dad, I'll never do this to my kids.

And I didn't! For a fledgling parent, it gave me a confidence-boosting, satisfying, affirming, and slightly smug I'm-not-my-parents feeling every time I didn't do it.
It lasted right up until the time when they were finally toilet trained and I suddenly found myself without a ready supply of wet wipes.

Then I thought: fuck it. *ptui* *scrubscrubscrub*

But fortunately by then I was a much more confident, satisfied, affirmative and smug parent. So, win!
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Sat 2 May 2009, 11:22, Reply)