The Thing About My Folks

When I was a kid, my folks were completely unreasonable. I mean, they were horrible, really. It’s amazing I made it through. When I think back now, as a parent myself, I may have called CPS on my parents several times. You have no idea.

Oh, sure, in public they were all nice and respectable... Actually, now that I think about it, they were equally as awful in public as they were at home.

You would like a few examples? Here you go:

• My parents never had cable or satellite TV. It was embarrassing. I had to go to my friend’s house to watch MTV. I never knew anything about Beavis and Butthead or Ren and Stimpy. I was a dork and it’s all their fault.
  
  And it didn’t stop with TV. We barely had video games. When someone pulled out their Nintendo, I had no idea what to do with it. I’m an inept gamer and it’s all their fault.

• My parents forced me to wear hand-me-down clothes. Never mind that I was the youngest of 4 kids and they couldn’t afford Hilfiger, Gap, or Structure. My clothes weren’t from the mall, usually not even from Wal-Mart. Most of the time I got to shop in MY BROTHERS’ CLOSET! I was mortified every time I walked down the hall at school.
  
  So when I saw A C Slater and his awesome stone washed jeans, I knew it was only a dream. I was a fashion don’t and it’s all their fault.

• My parents always had to know where I was and what I was doing. And we lived so far out of town that usually all I had available was MY BACK YARD! And I had a curfew at least an hour ahead of everyone else my age. Some of my friends didn’t have a curfew at all. You can guess where I went to spend the night as often as I could. I was a dweeb and it’s all their fault.

So you can see just these few examples of how bad my parents were at... PARENTING! I haven’t even gotten to how few times we ever went to Red Lobster or Olive Garden. I didn’t mention how my first jobs were when I was 9 years old. I can’t even think about not getting to go to cool places like Walt Disney World or Las Vegas. And, ugh, all that time we spent at CHURCH! Well, I didn’t actually mind that part so much. AWANA was kind of fun.

But because they gave birth to me, I was FORCED to follow my parents’ instructions. Because I have their DNA, I HAVE to show them honor, which is hard for me, given how my dad worked 12 hour shifts (supposedly to put food on the table and pay the mortgage) and my mom was always teaching at the same school as I was attending (again, EMBARRASSING).

It’s amazing to me that I turned out to be so well-adjusted. I’m incredibly cool for how I was brought up, even though I never got to hang out with drunks, drug addicts, or gangsters.

So thanks, Mom and Dad, for being such awful parents. No, seriously. Thank You.