Finger Wagging Gone Bad

I was driving my son Steven to work yesterday and he asked about how he could earn back a privilege that he had lost. It was just the kind of question a mom loves to answer while she has her son captive in the car for 15 minutes. I started out discussing the original transgression that had caused the suspension of the privilege which led to another area in his life that needed some fix ups and then transitioned perfectly into reminding him of two or three other of his faults that he may have forgotten about. I informed him of all of this in a nice gentle voice but at one point when I looked over at him, this boy, twice my size, had his head down and was staring at the discouragement puddled under his feet.
I said, "Now of course, we could start on me. I would love to be so patient and kind with people like you are."
His first look up was to check and see if I was being sarcastic (our family's favorite past-time) and when he saw I was sincere, he said, "I love you Mom, I know I need to work on things."
Me too.