QOTD - 10-03-05

[Alexis]

when i was 12 my parents split and i lived with my mum and her mum. it was like living in the 50's.

there was not one single night that i lived with my nana and mum that i spent a night alone in the house. There was always one or the other there with me.

When I was old enough to have a curfew (14), for every minute i was late, i would be grounded for 1 week. It didn't matter that I took the bus. It didn't matter if the busdriver stopped to pee or go to tim's. (my curfew was 11 btw, until i moved out at 16)

when i dated a boy that my mum and dad hated at 15, and he mouthed off to my mum, told her she was too strict....my mum took that as a challenge. i was put "under house arrest" (actual quote) and driven to and from school, not allowed to go anywhere. I was only allowed out of the house to go to school and see my dad.

this was all pre-jesus freak/prayer line days.and she wonders why i moved out the first chance i got. pfft

i will say though...that i wasn't ever a big drinker when i was younger...not that i am now. i did the obligatory testing phase in 15...but it didn't last long. and i also berated my friends for trying pot. although i think the copious amounts of weed i saw my rents smoke as a young child did that for me. i didn't even try drugs till i was 18. and my only attempts at crime was stealing something worth less than a dollar when i was 12. for which i was grounded for 4 months (through the summer and my birthday, i couldn't go outside, or watch TV, but i COULD watch star trek the next generation every night)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Damn, Ms. Hux, you sure raise some good QOTDs.

[Ms.Huxtable]

QOTDs? I think this is called therapy my friend.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

this was all pre-jesus freak/prayer line days.and she wonders why i moved out the first chance i got. pfft

Amid all the things you've got me thinking about now - I do wish all the time that Christianity weren't reduced so persistently to a resource for the hypersensitive to scale back on other people's experience. In a way, I'm glad there's a thriving evangelical school nearby Osgoode, because it siphons those folks away from my girls' school. Not to delve, but was that a phase that she ever pulled out of, as it often goes?

[meggo]

hmmm.. things i remember getting in big trouble for mostly happened when i was little [and left quite an imprint]. once when i was really young i thought it would be neat to colour the couches black with the inside of the burned-out jack o lanterns from halloween. that didn't go over well, at all. and the time i got nail polish in the VCR. scary, scary shit.

i got into lots of trouble as a teen but learned from my older sister's mistakes and covered my trail well [MUCH to said sister's chagrine, to which she clings up to this very day].

[phorbesie]

funnily enough, i think the time my parents were most 'concerned' about me (and i did some bad, bad things) was when one day i showed an interest in religion.

it freaked them out really really bad.

i kept having to say...but but but aren't you glad i'm staying out of trouble?!!

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

That's entirely too funny. Can I meet your parents?

[shainhouse]

I'm in some deep water now. religious differences.

[AdamH]

Well, there was the time my parents caught me with the waterwings wedged between the couch cushions...Sticky situation.

Gold!

[Guest Low Roller]

I was mostly a trouble-free child, but that could've stemmed from the Leather Belt of Discipline that was hanging in the hallway as a constant reminder not to mess up.

It was usually only there as a threat, but I remember one specific time when I was about 12 or 13 when it came into use.

Against my Dad's orders I rented a video game on a school night. I snuck it into the house and started playing it. When he saw it he immediately turned off the game despite my pleas to "just finish this one level" and told me to go to my room. I was so pissed that I ran into my room and slammed the door.

Things get a little fuzzy from there.

My Dad basically kicked the door down, closed the curtains and proceeded to flail me like a bad mule with the belt. I don't remember much after that... it falls into that deep repressed memory category.

[bouche]

funny thing. I can't think of anything.

[headymamamyrna]

funny thing. I can't think of anything.

Funny thing but I can't either!

[badams]

I have too many stories. They are better told in person and over a few beers. None of it was my fault however.

[Booche]

Badams, get Muller on this site answering this question. Hell, get him his own bloody blog. It would be world-renowned.

[headymamamyrna]

I have too many stories. They are better told in person and over a few beers. None of it was my fault however.

See you soon!

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

The belt... with us it was the brush. After I was fully grown, it was just old-fashioned guilt.

I just ran across one of my favourite parent-related quotes, which I'd printed off after Cassia was born and put up on the office wall (the quote, I mean, not her - from R.D. Laing, a therapist, who spent much of his professional life working with "normally" dysfunctional families.

"Yet if nothing else, each time a new baby is born there is the possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new bring, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light, precipitated into the outer darkness. Who are we to decide that it is hopeless?"

R.D. Laing

[badams]

Badams, get Muller on this site answering this question. Hell, get him his own bloody blog. It would be world-renowned.

There would be a million stories but I don't think he can even turn on a computer.

[PalacePrincess]

oh boy. if we're talking teen years, i could be here all day. however, similar to what misspink is talking about, there are some things i feel so bad about i am not even going to get into them. gad.

but little kid years, one infamous story comes to mind. i was about 2 years old, my sister was a baby, and it was late afternoon on a weekday. exhausted from having to look after a very young baby (in addition to a rather energetic, mischief oriented 2 year old), my mother made the mistake of laying on the couch to close her eyes for "just a second".

i was fine, i had my 50 songs to sing and dance along to

and a plethora of toys to keep me occupied. of course, none of these toys were quite as inviting as the thawing pork chops on the kitchen table...

so i clambered up onto a chair, and proceeded to handle the chops as though they were playdough -- all the while merrily singing along to my 50 children's favourites. i'm not sure what i was doing, probably pretending i had my own cooking show or something of the like, but certainly enjoying the squishy, greasy texture of those floppy chops.

and boy, were they greasy.

now, the thing about records, is once they reach a certain point, they end, and you have to flip them over to hear the other 25 children's favourites. well, being a "big girl" & all, i didn't have to wake up my mom, i could do it myself! so, over to daddy's stereo i went... i opened the glass doors, and proceeded to turn every knob, switch, slider, button, all of it. my music didn't start back up, but that was okay, i had a whole new toy to play with! i was now a stereo repairwoman, an astronaut, any important profession that required turning a lot of knobs & pressing lots of buttons.

before long, i heard my father's key in the back door. now, one thing about my dad.... he is probably the most anal & protective person i know when it comes to stereo equipment. always has to have the biggest & best everything, kept in absolutely pristine condition, without a speck of dust to be found. in later years, as his stereo equipment grew, so did the entertainment unit it was kept in, a big wood & glass aparatus, with locks on the doors and nary a fingerprint on the glass. but back to this fateful afternoon...

at the sound of my father's key in the lock, i ran through the ktichen to the back door, delighted to show him the "work" i had completed on his precious stereo equipment. he had the door maybe 1/2 open with one leg up the step when i cheerfully informed him "daddy! i fixed your stereo!" of course, the jaw dropping, eyes bugging out of his head reaction of "WHAT?!" was not quite the one i anticpated, so now, a little less sure of myself, i repeated "i fixed your stereo!".

he rushed past me into the house to see for himself, and boy what a sight it was.... porkchop fat & grease smeared over EVERYTHING, all over those no longer immaculate glass doors, over all the knobs, buttons, in the crevices, i can only imagine what a huge pain it would have been to clean all that grease off -- especially since grease is not exactly the easiset thing to clean.

of course, at 2 years old, there wasn't a whole lot that could be done to punish me. i remember my mother making me go to my room & telling me i what i had done was bad, and saying i had to stay there. i also remember my dad yelling at my mom -- who must have been still half asleep & confused at exactly what the heck was going on. sorry, mom.

i on the other hand, was quite unfazed by all of this hullabaloo. banished to my bedroom (and evidently still in astronaut mode), i clearly remember taking a toy iron i had, sticking the "plug" onto the wall (it had a suction cup on it), and laying down so my back was on the floor & my legs were on the wall (at a 90 degree angle). i was pretending i was in a rocket ship flying straight up (hence the angle) & the iron was my joystick-controller-yoke-thing that you fly rocketships with.

*sigh*, probably not the introspective, think about what you've done wrong period of punishment my parents were hoping for...

p.s. meggo, that jack-o-lantern, couch decorating story is hilarious! hahaha, it's amazing what seems perfectly sensible when you are a child.

[Guest Low Roller]

DEAR GOD!!! THE EVIL RABBIT! I THOUGHT I WAS RID OF HIM FOR GOOD!!

When I was young I was terrified of that rabbit. My sister would tease me by cornering me in the living room and point that very record at me saying "the rabbit is going to get you".

I had nightmares where I was being chased by that evil Bugs Bunny. I used to wake up crying in the middle of the night.

Come to think of it I had a very traumatizing childhood.

[Dr. J]

I think I'm a question behind, but because I haven't yet figured out what I want to do in life, I'll try this one first.

My brothers and I grew up in the village of Portsmouth (prior to it becoming Kingston's Olympic Harbour). Back in our day, the waterfromnt was littered with dilapidated boathouses, and a bunch of us lads had an old raft that we used to navigate the harbour with. Since our mother was terrified of the water, she made my brothers and I promise that we would never go out on the raft without her permission (which she never gave...but in mother's view life was more fair if she said without permission rather than to say never).

At any rate, one day my youngest brother and I decided we didn't have time for protocol and promptly hopped on the raft. Things went exceedingly well until we were pulling the thing back up on shore and my brother slipped and got his pants all wet.

We waited what we felt was an appropriate amount of time for his pants to dry and then headed home only to find we were wrong as the first thing mother said to us when we walked in was, "How did he get his pants so wet?" To this day, I'm still not sure why the question was directed at me, but it was and the best I could come up with was that he fallen in a puddle. Well, mother was having none of it, pointing out that one would never get that wet from falling in a puddle. To which I quickly responded, "He rolled over." Unfortunately, mother could find no humour or truth in what I was saying and immediately sent me to my room (while my brother went back out to play which I thought was totally unfair, until I remembered that around our place lying about something was always far worse than the something). True story. Lesson learned.

[Douglas]

I remember swimming at the Portsmouth Harbour...even when it was gross. My mom would get mad, not only because it was dangerous there, but also because it made us stink

[PalacePrincess]

DEAR GOD!!! THE EVIL RABBIT! I THOUGHT I WAS RID OF HIM FOR GOOD!!

my name...is BREEEEZY...to sing with me is EEEEEEZY...just listen to my hap-hap-happeee sonnng...

hahahahaha, score, another secret weapon. heh.

yeah, that bunny was just a little bit creepy. i wasn't as terrified of him as you evidently were, but there was something a little off about him all the same. invitingly creepy, sort of like the teddy bears' picnic song. the kids on the cover of that album looked like they're having a blast though! i actually found that record in a thrift store awhile ago. i bought it. heh heh.

[Dr. J]

My mom would get mad, not only because it was dangerous there, but also because it made us stink

haha I'd forgotten about that, douglas. Maybe it was the smell of the pants that gave us away. Didn't seem to bother us tho. When we got older we spent many summer days swimming off the end of the pier and jumping from the old metal tankards that they used to haul in and leave moored there.