Hmm, I think the key is to personify the yardstick as a teenager struggling with parental expectations. Since a yardstick is rigid and unchanging, the joke could be that the parents expect the yardstick to stay the same (not grow or change), but as a teenager, it wants to bend or change. The worksheet answer might be something like, "Why won't you let me bend to fit in?" or "You never let me grow an inch!"