About Your Parents Thread

My dad would count the grays in my hair and beard every time I saw him. Before I had kids, he'd even throw in the kicker, "...and you didn't even earn them."

 

My father used to nag the shit out of me, particularly when he drank. I used to weigh probably 35 pounds more than I do now, and he would often make comments. Never mind that he was also overweight until he had his gall bladder out and then miraculously kept the weight off, mostly by smoking. Making any kind of negative comments to people about their appearances is harmful and annoying as shit. Oh I'm overweight? Thanks for fucking letting me know, these jeans are only riding up my ass all day.

Last week, after enduring regular comments about the length of my beard and the length of my hair, and always as soon as we met after a first days apart, I told my gf to cut it out. I said, "Do I ever comment about the length of YOUR beard?" Thankfully she laughed and hopefully took the hint.

 

One day you'll probably have a son you're nagging the hell out of. I am, at this moment, on my son's ass. He wants to go from a dorm to an apartment/house for next year. Called me yesterday frantic because he needed $700 for the deposit since another set of potential renters is on the scene. I immediately dropped what I was doing and made arrangements to get him the $700. Texted him just now ... get 'er done? "I had kind of a busy day, so I'm gonna do that tomorrow."

 

Yeah, he used that money to buy drugs

 

Well, Whataburger and Raising Cane's and Torchy's Tacos can be addictive

 

Don't I know it. Hell, that's why I used to weigh so much in college. On top of the incessant beer drinking, my diet basically consisted of Taco Bell, Dairy Queen and Pizza Hut, which were all located within three minutes of my dorm room.

 

My mom kicked me out of the house when I was 21 because she thought I was a bad influence on my brothers. She was right.

 

Outing alert: HC's mom is 21's mom.

 

Sorry thy overruled you. It sounds like something she would have appreciated.

 

My mom and dad have been gone 23 and 16 years respectively.

My mom used to nag me on silly trivial stuff, but never on anything serious (and plenty of times when I deserved it). She had some emotional problems and for a decade or so drank too much, but the last 10 years of her life she was pretty stable. She was very smart but "mercurial," given to depression -- I think she was probably bipolar.

I think some of it might be the way the five (well, six) of us kids were spread out. She lost one baby (which affected her years later), then had me, then my sister three years later. Then a seven-year gap and she had three more kids spaced out over six years.

So she had me and my sister, and just as we were both off to school, she has another baby, and another, and another. I think maybe she felt she was ready to "resume" her life, and the three youngest kids arrived and she had to spend almost another decade changing diapers. By the time the last kid was off to school, she was 50.

My dad tried to get on me on some serious matters some times; I didn't always respond as well as I should have. Maybe he should have come down harder on me but he just wasn't a hard-ass by nature.

My mom's somewhat-erratic behavior (exaggerated tales of her bad driving and sloppy housekeeping) sometimes is becoming the butt of family legends in stories told by some of my much-younger siblings to my nieces/nephews (her grandchildren) and it's starting to piss me off. She's not around to defend herself any more (and died before any of the kids were born). Those kids will never know their grandma and they shouldn't be brought up thinking she was some kind of dopey bat-brain.

As the eldest of the family, I've put my foot down on it a couple times. I've told them, "If you didn't get along with Mom, that was between you to work out and it wasn't up to me to fix, but don't try to get even for it 20 years after she's dead by making her a punch line to the kids."

Of course, to borrow the phrasing from Ray Kinsella in "Field of Dreams," my decade-plus younger sibs only knew her when she was older and worn down by life. They never knew her when she was young and hopeful and full of plans for life, and I kinda did.

By the time her emotional/behavior and to some extent drinking problems got bad, I was out of the house, so I don't know all the details of how she got along with the other kids. I think one sister particularly resented a lot of the shit she did. Ironically, that sister (not the legendary StarSis) herself is exhibiting some of the same personality quirks as she gets older (minus the drinking).

Our mom had a somewhat fractious relationship with her own mother, who lived to be 99 and outlived her by two years (she died at 63). I think a couple of my sisters had bumpy relationships with Mom as somewhat of a reflection of that.

 

I've got to say every day I feel blessed that I have a mom and step-dad who did not nag me; somehow they conveyed the last message that "you need to get the stuff done that needs to get done and don't embarrass the family name in doing it." Sure I procrastinate at times but I get things done without having to be hounded into it and my parents never second guessed me (except when they disagreed with my decision to go to law school but accepted it when I graduated.) We have a relationship where they don't get too up in my stuff but I always know they love and care about me and my family and would do anything for us if needed. (Conversely, someone very close to me has had controlling parents their whole life and its made me so thankful for my parents.)

 

I hope I wasn't the only one on whom his parents wished children who were every bit the pain in the ass he was.

I know my dad is somewhere laughing his ass off at how crazy my kids make me sometimes.