Louds In The Cradle: Chapter Six.
The Loud House © Nickelodeon
At the end of the last chapter, Lincoln flat-out told Lola "Why should I listen to your opinion? You're just six!" and she couldn't deal. We're about to see why he grew a bit more backbone.
Lynn Sr continued on by saying "Not that I can blame him for dummying up. He's getting to be the age when Daddy stops being Superman and starts being Darth Vader. Also, one must consider the fact that while people at a certain elementary school used to refer to a certain person as the Queen Of Mean, she can't hold a candle to a pint-sized tyrant in a pink dress. All the first person has going for her is the slug-the-not-my-boyfriend-in-the-arm thing. The second person I'd mentioned has allowed her fame to curdle her character and cause her to believe that normal rules don't apply to her…..which is kind of my fault, really. This is because it's taking longer than I hoped for her to run into a brick wall."
Most of the people had a fair idea of what Lynn Sr meant by that comment. Most people are not his daughters Leni and Lana. As you well know, the two of them have the literal-minded nature one associates with the six year old. As you also know, Leni has the body of sixteen year old who can't quite manage to decipher most of the off-color comments pretty girls have to endure. This is why the slightly less mature one frowned and said "Like totes harsh, Daddy. I know Lola can be scary but to want her to run into a brick wall…."
"No, Leni. I mean that I want her bad habits to backfire on her so she learns that she can't spend her life screaming and threatening people just because she's angry. I mean, she's already learned that she's only as big as she is here because she hasn't been anywhere else much yet so that's taken care of. What she needs to learn is that losing her cool isn't cool."
"What it leads to is her being the one person people are right about when they say 'Oh, that spineless goof Lynn Loud…..he's too chicken to keep those wild children of his under control' when what most of them do is just irritate me. Lola scares me just a bit….not because of her temper, though. It's what people might do to her because of it."
"The problem is that you can't simply tell your children things because they're bound to make a hash of whatever you might say. It's kind of why I outsourced cheering Lincoln up after he'd started fretting about his friends drifting away from him to Lori. She might be a bit of a drill sergeant (because she has to be) but she is basically a sympathetic ear. It's also why it took those eight days I'd mentioned."
"My intentions were good, of course, and I'd thought that I'd finally found something positive in him that reflected something I liked about myself. They probably didn't tell you or Sid about this but about a few months back, we'd had a bit of a dry run for Operation: Descend Upon Great Lakes City Like The Mongol Hordes And End Up Looking And Feeling Like Squadoo. That's because while Mrs Loud and the girls had big fun at a big flea-market (until Lana got a case of the stupids and gave everyone a case of the fleas), Lincoln and I acted like world-class jerks to company. He invited the friendship circle he's realized might crumble to play a new video game while I brought my friends over to play a bargain-basement version of D&D and we did the sitcom idiot thing of putting tape down the hall instead of acting like sane people, Being a sore loser is kind of a thing with us, you see."
Ronnie Anne said "I'd noticed that."
"I should say would, what with the oldest of my kids as a fixture in your life. In any event, the people we were jerking around told us to cut the malarkey and combine the events and a great time was (finally) had by all. This gave me a certain amount of hope that there was something about myself I actually liked in Lincoln: a love of constructed worlds and fantasy that my daughters simply do not have. One of them runs around letting people know that it's a science fact something she knows zip-all about 'stinks' because she saw a Hammer Horror movie that said that white-haired children are evil and flammable and that's all sci-fi can be. It's the one who's in a sour mood because her mother told her that she personally thought that children laugh at her clown act because they're afraid that if they don't, she'll break into their homes and kill them while adults laugh because they're afraid that if they don't, she'll slit her wrists."
"I think that's going a bit far myself. Seriously, Rita…..breaking into houses and killing people? Now, the slitting her wrists part…..that's kind of why you gotta treat her with kid gloves. Sad clown, right?"
"Anyhow, I'm still being driven off-track by my daughters. Kind of an occupational hazard. Suffice to say it didn't go very well."