Dog Days of Parenting

I've tried and I've tried, but it's impossible to be funny during the dog days of parents.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you don't have children, or you don't yet have teenagers.
I have four.
That's enough to stamp out all your energy, all your sanity, and most certainly, your sense of humor.
Just ask my kids.
They'll tell you in a heart beat that I'm humorless.
When they sit in the back of the car on a family trip and see who can hit each other the hardest.
"What?
Are you kidding me?" I ask, trying to keep my husband from pulling over on the Jersey turnpike to "deal" with the situation. "You think this is funny?"
"You used to have a sense of humor, Mom," they like to say, pointing out the obvious (to them) flaw in my middle age self.
So they stop hitting each other and start burping the alphabet.
I know.
Burping the alphabet was something many children attempt when they're young. Much younger. They stopped for a while. Then they became teenagers and regressed. It gets worse too. The older they get the more skilled they become. When they were five they could only get to D or E. Now it's more like R or U. My son swears he's made it to Z a few times. I just hope that wasn't in someone else's car on some else's family trip. Or do I?
With teenagers I find I am no longer embarrassed.
I'm more harassed.
Yes, and harried.
More frustrated, annoyed, perplexed, worried, fearful, irritated, repulsed, distressed, baffled, dismayed, unhinged, agitated, flustered, and stumped, but I am truly rarely embarrassed.
They've worn me down.
I do not make apologies for them anymore.
They are enough their own persons that they are the ones who should be embarrassed by their behaviors, not me.
And they get this.
They get this enough that they know how to behave when they're not around me, or so I'm told by folks who are very confused when I dare to mention any of my children's short comings (except of course for family members who spend time around my children AND me.)
"You say he's rude? I've just never seen it," they say. "Just yesterday he helped a stray kitten out of a tree before he volunteered to help a handicapped child with his Biology homework and then he went out of his way to get me a Cappuccino when I mentioned that I was fatigued. This child couldn't possibly be rude."
Okay, maybe it's not that rosy, but adults outside of our family seem to see my children in a different light.
I'd like to think that's more indicative of who they really are.
I'd like to think it's a sign of who they're to become.
I'd like to think it has something to do with how they've been raised.
But then, if I take any credit for the good, I will have to own my responsibility for what is not good.
I do not.
I have never even attempted to burp the alphabet, nor do I ever wish to do so.
I'm not a prude, by any means, but I am most certainly not a teenager.
Nor would I want to be.
But then I don't want to raise teenagers either.
I want my babies back.
Or better yet, puppies.
If there are to be dog days, could I at least spend them with my dogs, who can't even say the alphabet, let alone burp it. They love you just for coming home and will never, ever accuse you of not having a sense of humor.
Which I do.
Just don't ask my kids.