The Thing About My Parents

I noticed the title of a film recently… it was called “The Thing About My Parents”. I haven’t seen it, but it got me thinking about the topic.

Here are some things about my parents:

If we did something stupid and got in trouble we could never say the right thing.

If we tried to defend our actions by saying, “But I didn’t think…”
They’d interject with, “That’s RIGHT, you DIDN’T think!!!”
But if we cried, “But I thought that…”
They’d cut in, “You THOUGHT WRONG!”

Deterrents never worked, in fact, they guaranteed we’d do the “forbidden” activity.

Absolutely EVERYTHING that my parents warned us were worthy of the strictest punishment (a spanking with my father’s belt) we did AT LEAST ONCE. Were we THAT dumb? Especially since the spank-worthy activities were categorized as such because they were potentially life threatening. Perhaps we had a subconscious penchant for getting whooped on the ass.

My parents somehow found out EVERYTHING bad that we did (almost).

“So you kids were having water fights in the house again!” (Evidence: water spots on the wall).
“You kids have to stop picking your noses.” (Hint: move bed and see what’s on the wall… eeewwwww! Kids are gross.)
“Were you playing with the bull?” (Saw me aggravating the bull from the kitchen window, as a kid I didn’t realize that a fence wouldn’t stop 1000lbs of frustration.)
“How many beer did you have?” (In grade 9 I was dumb and they were smart enough to kiss me goodnight after going to my first real ‘drinkin’ party’.)

They just left us to our own devices way to often and for way too long.

I’ve come to this conclusion because we had to “make up” a lot of games due to the shortage of toys around our house. Kids are weird. ‘Nuff said. (Ok, case in point: We made up a game called “Planet of the Apes” where we’d run down the hill like monkeys. That was the game.)

I’m pretty good at imitating voices so a friend recently asked me to imitate my Dad and I said:

CAN IT BACK THERE YOU KIDS!
HEY GET OUTTA THERE!
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING!!!

(Note: It’s been years, for the most part, that I’ve heard my Dad yelling that loud. Alas, this is still my best imitation.)

Recently my ma said to me…

“Maybe we did something wrong in raising you kids. You needed to be told that your special just the way you are. Maybe we didn’t encourage you enough…” I wanted to say, “YA THINK?????”
Nah, it wasn’t their fault (or was it?).
I probably would have ended up scrambled in the head either way (see below.)

I’ve often wondered if it’s “nature” or “nurture”.

Either way we are screwed because both are under the influence of my parents!!!

Nowadays my parents are pretty cool.

They’ve definitely mellowed, especially my dad. He doesn’t yell much anymore and he is a lot more fun. (Teasing him is still a bit tenuous though. Mostly we still have to tease him behind his back so he doesn’t know. It’s just safer that way.)

The goal of any conversation with my mom is…

To get her to say, “You’re sick” at some point. It gives me a giggly kind of satisfaction.

And a final thought about parents…

We all want our parents to stay together, but don’t want ANY overt physical indication that they are still in love and ‘doing it’.

Ewww. Need I say more?