Parents speak

It's about 3 mins to 1 in the morning and I'm not sleeping -- nor feeling the least bit sleepy. No surprise there. This not-so-new job (I've lasted 6 months in this one) has turned my freakin' life upside down. Sleeping when normal people are out there earning their livings and staring at the damn computer when all my friends and family are tucked away cozily in bed. Really makes me wonder sometimes --- our world is going crazy. I mean I was brought up to believe that when the sun went down you were supposed to be home -- in fact my dad even had this weird thing about me being home before the streetlights came on (??!!) Imagine my plight when the bastards used to switch on the streetlights sometimes at 6 in the evening -- giving absolutely no thoughts to children of parents who had this unexplainable rule!

But a few years ago I found out my folks and their (sometimes) crazy rules were not that different from the other parents rules.
In fact my friends and I have actually had conversations on the secret parent's club that hands out this 'rule and dialogue' handbook to new parents. Let's see...here's some of the stuff I remember

1. Do what you want! Translation -- THE ANSWER IS ABSOLUTELY NO!!! Defy me at your own peril!

2. If you swallow a fruit seed, that tree is going to grow in your stomach and the branches are going to come outta your ears. -- That one didn't last too long. Thanks to their own mistake of sending me to school, I figured out pretty fast, my own self-made orchard would not be coming anytime soon.

3. Coming the final exam and I'd hear these words "You know the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th & 12th Stds are the most important years in your school life and you must take them seriously" -- the following year "You're going to regret studying 'cause the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th & 12th Stds are the most important years in your school life".
I swear I think I heard this every single year of my school life.

Next day -- funnily enough I did feel sleepy. And now I'm back to finish off the rest of the blog.

4. "We know what's best for you" - - I love my parents and everything, but they sometimes really didn't know what was 'best' for me at the time -- but then maybe even I didn't know what was best for me either.

5. "The day you have your own kids you'll understand" - Kinda tough to get a 14-year-old to understand that bit, especially when they've had a rocking good time with friends and just forgot to notice when the streetlights came on -- there's that one again!

6. "He's a boy and you're a girl" -- Umm...thank you for that enlightening piece of info that has been drilled into me ever since I could understand that men and women are two different kinds of humans. But hey!! I really don't think its fair for parents to contribute to something that I would be told and made to feel all my life.
In retrospect, perhaps the only concession I'll make for my parents saying this was when I tried to imitate the way my brother peed.

--It's surprising how, after (nearly) 27 years of my life, I can still hear the way my parents would say certain things to me. There are a few of them I still hear today, but all-in-all I think my folks have been great, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, they've really done a great job with their kids -- handbook or not!!