The Things My Parents Taught Me

Ciao, merry wanderers of the net!

            This turned into a behemoth of a blog post, which is why it’s a week late! First of all, I hope everyone’s Saint Patrick’s Day was fun and safe. Mine was a combination of wonderful and dizzingly complicated, but that’s a story for another day. For all my fellow Falcons, I hope Spring Break was a blast! Mine ended up being interesting, mostly awesome with a bit of frustration and suckage thrown into the mix. Home was quiet, and Pittsburgh was, for the most part, lovely. It was amazing to see GG and to meet her friends about whom I had heard so much for years. We went to an insanely delicious German restaurant (Hofbräuhaus-go, eat bier cheese, and take a shotski!) and hung out with a very interesting group of people she’s been close to since high school. I got to romp around the stairs where a scene for The Dark Knight Rises was shot (joygasm!) and saw the Pittsburgh city skyline from a beautiful, albeit vertigo-inducing, height.

So beautiful! Glad Heinz Field wasn't in the shot.

...don't judge me.

           

            On the other hand, I stuck out like a loud, swearing, eccentric sore thumb in the sweet, conservative suburbia that is GG’s neighborhood, but that was to be expected. GG was, in fact, excited about that. Though I still maintain that I wasn’t terribly out of place in her actual township. When we went out, I saw tattoos, piercings, and neon hair dye at places like Giant Eagle and Panera. Pittsburgh itself seemed exceptionally diverse and accommodating to all sorts of colourful subcultures. GG even told me that Psyclon Nine had played there, which tells me that there’s a pretty healthy goth population in PA. Also, Pittsburgh is one of the most gay-friendly cities in the country.

            The only real ‘trouble’ of my break was the excessive driving. So…much…driving! I am a woman who loves to travel, but scientists need to get on bringing Star Trek teleportation devices to the real world. I am far too active to be able to sit still staring at the flat road ahead of me for hours on end, and I’m terrified of flying. I also almost got run off the road by some idiotic cazzo on my way back to BG, which resulted in my heart racing and launching me into a panic attack on the side of the road. Not the break from the road I was hoping for.

           

            Anyway, I spent a couple of days with the parents, which has always been a bit of a culture shock since I left the nest five years ago. For one, my home neighborhood is silent as the grave. When I’m trying to sleep at my parents’ place, I can hear my own cells dividing. Because of the silence and the utter darkness (there are no streetlights) I always feel like I’m experiencing that tense, silent moment in horror movies that always occurs just before the killer leaps out of the closet.

           

I know you're in there, you sunnovabitch...

            Another strange thing is that my dad has converted my brothers’ and my old playroom in the basement into a laboratory where he builds insane computers from scraps. But that’s not really a culture shock…that’s just awesome. To paraphrase the Big Bang Theory, my dad is one lab accident away from becoming a super villain.

            When I come home and spend time with my mother, it’s always strange, too. I never noticed it growing up, but my mom operates on an entirely different level of anxiety than the rest of the world. Hanging out with her is like being perpetually ten minutes late for a flight. It’s go-go-go, we don’t have time for that, did you bring everything? Let’s MOVE! We went to the mall once, and mom speed-walked from store to store and pushed to leave because she had to have dinner ready in three hours! When I told her to calm the hell down, she said, “What? I’m totally relaxed. This is my day off.” And the freaky part is…that’s my mother in a relaxed state! Frankly, I’m surprised her heart hasn’t exploded.

            Va bene. Whenever I’m home, it’s an experience. And visiting my parents over Break got me thinking about all of the things they taught me, either actively or subconsciously, and how they apply to my life today. For the most, part, they hold true. Some of them, however, I don’t agree with at all, and didn’t even noticed my parents believed until leaving their household. And seeing as I have this nifty blog into which to pour my thoughts, as well as a habit of list-making, I’m going to reflect on these lessons.

            Some of the lessons I’ve learned from my family that still hold true in my life today:

Family is Everything: This one wasn’t actively stated, but I grew up with an extremely supportive family involved in one anothers’ lives. My mom and dad are extreme workaholics, but neither of them ever missed a game, concert, or play in which my brother and I had participated. Time was always made for us, both by my immediate and extended family, and I never went through crises, whether they were legitimate or teenaged melodrama, without warm and loving support. Nothing can replace the family, and when I start a family of my own (ideally me with an optional husband raising four mama’s boys!) I will be for them just as much as my family was, and still is, for me.

By far, my favourite family portrait.

Take Time for Pleasure: First of all, I’ve been watching a ton of How I Met Your Mother, so I have to say what up! to this title. But anyway, as I previously stated, my parents are extreme workaholics and always very efficient with their insanely busy schedules. However, they both take time out of their days, no matter how busy or stressful, to unwind in their favourite ways. For Daddy, that means building prospective Hal 9000s in the basement, blowing up adolescents in online shooter games, and watching TV. Mama loves to read, do karate, and hike. Though I am…er, slightly…more indulgent than my parents about doing the things I love to do before the things I have to do, they taught me that you need to take time to yourself, even just a little bit, no matter what kind of schedule you keep.

Music is Life: This was another lesson not actively spoken to me, but my parents often tell me that music has been a part of my life since my conception, which I hope they’re joking about for the sake of avoiding mental scars. There are home videos of Baby Dee dancing to Ozzy and singing along to Rush. Every Sunday I would wake up to music blasting from the living room surround sound. My brother has most of the actual musical ability as far as vocal talent and the ability to read music and play instruments go (talented bastard), but I absolutely cannot imagine a life without music. To this day I can’t clean my apartment without pulling up my Itunes, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand it when someone tells me they’re “not really into music.” From the day I had developed ears, music has been a part of my life, and it is a necessity.

<3 Represent. <3

There is Always Time for Exercise: This one is all Mom. I have never been able to stop myself from mentally groaning whenever someone complains that they “have no time” for exercise. After being raised by my mother, I know that “having no time” to exercise is about as likely as Megan Fox getting an Oscar. Mama worked full time, went to school at night, and raised my brother and me, and still managed to get her ass on a treadmill every day. “Having no time” is just an excuse to not exercise, and if you don’t want to exercise, that’s your business, but don’t complain to me about it or say “I hate you because you’re so skinny!” to me. Mama made no excuses for herself; she’s exercised consistently since she was around 16, and any time she’s stopped for a few weeks, she’s honest with herself and everyone else about why. I know when I’ve slipped out of the habit of yoga and belly dance, and it’s never been because I have no time. It’s because I’ve been feeling lazy lately, or just didn’t really feel like doing it. And then, like my mom, I’ve gotten over it and thrown the hip scarf back on. If you’re honest with yourself, you’re far more likely to get your lazy ass in gear than just saying you have no time. Because if my mother has the time to exercise, everyone does.

            Oh, and not to tilt into total bitch mode, but don’t complain to me about having no time to exercise when you’ve been chatting with me on Facebook for an hour. I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened to me and how much it pisses me off. No time to haul your ass onto a yoga matt for 45 minutes, but plenty of time to sit on it in front of a computer screen? Spare me.

            Aaand that just turned into a bitchy rant within a rant. A metarant!

            Moving on!

Homosexuality is No Big Deal: I have quite a long, rainbow-coloured branch in my family tree, with gay family members spanning three generations. Growing up, my homosexual family members didn’t hide who they were, nor was there any time where our parents sat us own and had a discussion about why auntie likes other girls. It was just the way it was, no different than having a soft spot for blondes or bad boys. I didn’t even realize that the topic was controversial until middle school. It made no sense to me. Whose business is it whom you fall in love with? I was raised with homosexuality treated as nothing strange, taboo, or exceptional, and that’s the way it absolutely should be, because all this controversy is just ridiculous.

Having a Religion Isn’t Necessary: Yeah, I realize this is one that isn’t going to sit well with most American family units. I was raised agnostic, without any religion whatsoever. For the record, this is not the reason for my sometimes harsh attitude toward the way Christianity is carried out in this country. That came from having been raised in a small, conservative town overrun with evangelicals. In first grade, I was strongly reprimanded by my 6-year-old peers for not knowing who Jesus is and instructed on how to “let him into my heart” so I don’t go to hell. But I digress. As a result of being raised agnostic, my brother and I were able to grow up without any outdated ritualistic moral restrictions dictated to our family buy some guy behind a pulpit. We’ve grown up to be open-minded and accepting people, free of archaic and irrelevant prejudices. We’ve freely researched other religions, cultures, and activities without fear of persecution or eternal damnation in some abstract, fiery afterlife. I understand that there are benefits to religions for certain people, so this is a lesson that applies to my life specifically, rather than one I feel everyone should follow.

Have a Thick Skin: This may be the lesson or which I’m most grateful. Mom was (and still can be) quite the financial coddler, but in general I was raised in an environment of lighthearted teasing and hearty ball breaking. We are a hilariously sarcastic family, and we constantly tease one another. It’s all very playful, but it did end up giving me a high threshold for teasing, and it made me develop a thicker skin than an awful lot of people around me. Seriously, you have no idea how many people just can’t take a joke or can’t handle it when someone points out that they aren’t infallible. I’m the first to admit that sometimes my ball breaking crosses lines (and if it ever does, I need to be informed, because I usually have no idea I’ve actually offended somebody) but honestly, it sure as hell beats bursting into tears because someone told me I suck at parallel parking or that I sometimes dress like a puttana.

            Yes, I said sometimes. Bite me. ;)

            Anyway, too many people of my generation were raised by coddling parents who spoonfed them undeserved praise and wildly unrealistic flattery while avoiding any playful joshing or honest, gentle criticism. I’m thankful every day that my parents didn’t raise me to be  an overly-sensitive womanchild who crumbles like an ash log at the lightest joke at my expense. I don’t believe that the world is overly cruel or anything like that, but it sure as hell isn’t going to cater to entitled little twenty-somethings who believe they’re deity’s gift to mankind.

            And for the record, I royally suck at parallel parking.

            I’ve learned plenty more from my parents, but I don’t want this list to last forever. I was also raised with some opinions I ended up not agreeing with, though, which I’m going to share also.

Violent Video Games and Media Causes Violence: This was actually something I didn’t realize my mother believed until I was in college and it came up in discussion. I remember Mama not allowing us to play with fake guns when we were really little, but we also sat and watched Daddy play Duke Nukem (“It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum…and I’m all outta gum”) and played Mortal Combat on our PS. We did have some restrictions on TV; we couldn’t watch The Simpsons for a while, and Daddy didn’t let me sit in when he watched The Sopranos the first few seasons, but other than that, we weren’t really terribly censored. When my mother voiced this rather strong opinion that the youth of today are desensitized and prone to violence because of the media, like movies, video games, the news, etc, it didn’t exactly jive with how I was raised.

I can't tell you how many cars I've jacked since I started playing GTA.

            I was totally shocked to hear such a conservative view come out of my mother’s mouth. Mama is by no means an ignorant person, and for her to have such a strong opinion that is so misinformed was almost a Twilight Zone experience for me. I distinctly remember a time when we were discussing Pearl Jam’s controversial music video for their amazing song Jeremy.

           

            “There were no school shootings until that song.” She said, “Then the video came out, and suddenly kids are shooting up their schools all over the country.”

            The music video for Jeremy caused quite a sensation when it came out. For those of you who don’t know, Jeremy is based on the true story of a boy who was tormented by his peers. He ended up standing in the front of the classroom, putting a gun in his mouth, and committing suicide in front of his entire class. MTV decided to cut the part of the music video where Jeremy puts the gun in his mouth, relying instead on the image of the students shielding their faces with Jeremy’s blood spattered all over their uniforms. Unfortunately, this led to some misunderstanding the story and thinking that Jeremy had shot his fellow students instead of himself. Apparently, my mother sites this as the origin of all school shootings.

            I’m still having a hard time believing my mom actually holds this opinion. I mean…wow. First of all, anyone who was bullied in high school can tell you that they don’t need media inspiration to fantasize about bringing a gun to class. Secondly, the idea that there were no school shootings before the 90s is just flat out untrue. There are countless documented reports of school shootings by students dating back to the 1800s. Example, Matthew Ward, a student, came into his Kentucky school with a gun and shot his principal in 1853. And it didn’t take much digging for me to refute mom’s belief. A quick Wikipedia search for ‘school shooting’ alone could do the trick. My mom does tend to take conventional wisdom at face value, rather than delving into something, but come on…this one’s just too easy to debunk.

            I’ve never believed that music, TV, movies, or any other form of entertainment media can be held exclusively responsible for the violence of the general population. I mean…come on, if we were all that impressionable and stupid, natural selection would’ve taken care of us a millennia ago. Romans watched people get torn apart by lions, gladiators, and slaves. Public executions were the height of entertainment for centuries and centuries. Those who commit atrocities and claim they were driven to by Ozzy lyrics or Catcher in the Rye or whatever are roughly as credible as those who receive messages from aliens living inside their toasters. They’re mentally unstable to begin with, and if listening to Marilyn Manson hadn’t “inspired” them to do something violent, it would’ve been something else. Call me optimistic, but I believe in the common sense of the general public when it comes to deciding whether or not violent media should be emulated.

            As far as the media “desensitizing” people to violence, I also don’t buy it. I mean, maybe when we’re watching movies, we go, “Oh, come on, they call this violent? Only, like, twelve people have been blown up!” but you can’t tell me that because of Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino, nobody blinks an eye when they see gore in real life. I study serial killers and have a fondness for gritty slasher films (70s were the best for gore!), but if I ever drove by a car accident on the freeway and saw a corpse, I’m positive I would be horrified, stricken by tragedy, and possibly physically ill. I know I can only speak for myself, but I’m pretty sure most people react to real-life personal tragedies far more harshly than they do when it happens to a stranger on the news or in the summer’s latest blockbuster.

            Okay, wow….this is getting really long.  But oh well. It’s my blog and I’ll rant as much as I want to, dammit!

The Quiet Life is Bliss: I strongly suspect that this is an age/maturity thing, but I do not share my parents’ love for a quiet house, a consistent routine, and little travel. My restlessness may quell with age, but as of right now in my life, I hate silence, and I hate excessive routine. Hell, I prefer taking summer classes because I don’t have a chance to grow bored with my semester schedule (and boredom is the kiss of academic death for me.) My parents love nothing more than to come home after a long day of work and sit and read or watch TV or otherwise melt into the house. I can handle doing things like that at times. Frequently, even. But if I don’t get out of the house, either to a bar or a friends’ house or to window shop on Main Street, I go thoroughly insane. I’m a social girl with a love for new places and new experiences. Going home every night and doing the same thing with no change in a quiet place, quite frankly, sounds like Satan’s plan for my afterlife, should Christianity end up having it right. I like to put it this way; I’m a writer, and I like it when the story of my life is moving, when plot is happening. Plot doesn’t happen when you’re sitting on your couch every night.

Friendships are Nice, but Not Necessary: This one kind of ties into the one above. I realize that I’m a young woman and I haven’t started a family, and once a family starts, that takes precedence over the friendships I currently hold so close to my heart. That aside, I am a social creature, and I always have been. I know life changes people, but I couldn’t really imagine not having a circle of friends to spend time with outside of work and childrearing. I predict that my life will be more like How I Met Your Mother…you know, where even though I only have one biological sibling, my kids are going to have a ton of aunts and uncles. I don’t see myself becoming one of those people whose only social contact other than their family is at work. I enjoy people too much.

Generic Brands are Always Just as Good: Mom’s always been incredibly stubborn about this, and after giving me a ton of crap for buying Cascade when I had a dishwasher, she later ended up admitting they were worth the money. So though generic brands are cheaper and I prefer them for the most part, sometimes it’s worth it to buy the brand name. And I totally threw this one onto the blog just to piss off Mom. ;)

Oh, you KNOW it never tastes the same!

20-somethings Today are Grotesquely Immature: Of all these lessons that I disagree with, this is really the only one that pisses me off. To an extent, I agree. Our generation is nicknamed the “boomerang generation,” because so many of us go out to college, get out degrees, and move back in with our parents. I know everyone has their circumstances and their reasons for moving back to their childhood homes, but I could never do it. Free rent aside, I’m 24, and I left the nest five years ago. I couldn’t imagine moving back there. This is me personally, but I’d rather live out of my car with Stella and my cats then have to make my parents take care of me to that extent again. So as far as the boomerang generation goes, I’ll never be in that particular batch of stats.

            However, my mother’s beliefs (and probably my father’s, too, though he and I haven’t really discussed this topic at length) extend further than the Boomerang phenomenon. At 24, my mother was married, renting to own a house, had had me and was pregnant with my brother, and working full time while going to night classes. Though she denies it, it’s obvious when she talks that she feels our generation should be doing the same things, or at least on that track. Boomerang tendencies aside, my generation is vastly different than my parents’, largely due to the fact that a greater number of us (the majority??) go to college now, therefore delaying out insertion into the “real world” of career and family and home owning and all that for at least four years. Even then, we have a different way of doing things. On the whole, my generation focuses on career advancement and self-discovery rather than immediately settling down. We like to spend our 20s and even 30s climbing up the career ladder, or travelling, or uprooting ourselves to new cities while we have nothing tying us to one place. We live our lives, and then we settle down, which is the polar opposite of what pretty much every other generation in the US has ever done.

            Honestly, I’m completely happy with our way of doing things. I can pick up and move to Chicago in August without having to worry about kids adjusting to a new school, or hubby’s and my careers, or bailing on the mortgage. As for kids, I can barely handle my dog. I can’t imagine dealing with diaper changes and colic and saving up for college funds. But what I see as something wonderful; we like to live our lives before we’re too old to enjoy it; my mom sees as immature, that we delay “real life” as long as we can and we want to be kids forever.

            Well…I honestly wouldn’t mind delaying real life and being a kid forever, but I don’t believe that that’s what my entire generation does. We just want to live the prime of our lives doing what we’d like to do, rather than spending our “best” physical years married with a house and kids and a permanent job. We don’t want to wait til retirement to do all those things, because…dude, we’ll be old! What if you want to repel down Mt Vesuvius or something? Unless you’re Heracles, you can’t really do that in your sixties or seventies. At the very least, you can’t do it like you can in your 20s.

            I also got into a rather unjustified (I’d had the mother of all bad weekends) argument with Mama about subcultures. Naturally, it focused on the goth subculture, as I visit its underground on a weekly basis, but her opinion applies to pretty much all of them. I was talking to her about friends of mine whom I see exclusively at Ination, and their ages came up. I told her a lot of them were my age, some in their late 20s, early 30s, and a couple in their 40s.

My mom physically cringed and said, “Well the guy in his 40s, he doesn’t dress like that at work or anything, does he?”

            “I don’t think so,” I replied.

           

            “So he’s kind of like you, right, and only dresses like that on club nights?”

            “No, I’m pretty sure he wears his goth gear everywhere but work, Mom. It’s how he likes to dress.”

            My mom shook her head, “Wow,” she said, “That’s…pathetic.”

            …okay. If there is one word in the English language that hits the mother of all nerves in me (other than  cunt), it’s the word “pathetic.” I myself used to use it lightly, but have since pretty much cut it out of my verbal vocabulary. I snapped, my vision went white, and I got fucking pissed off. First of all, the term “pathetic” should never, ever be used lightly. Secondly, if someone in their 40s is a responsible human being, paying bills and holding a steady job and generally content with life…what the fuck does it matter if you wear eyeliner and black vinyl to Walmart? How the hell is that pathetic? My mother—and, to take her off the spot, a lot of people—feel that most subcultures should just be phases, acceptable for the young ones searching for identity, but “pathetic, sad, creepy, and wrong” for anyone deemed “too old.”

            …What the fuck?

            First off, connecting with a subculture happens as one discovers oneself, so yes, often when one is goth or a punk or a hippie, etc, it is a phase in the journey of self-discovery. But that doesn’t make subcultures exclusively transitional. There are those who identify with a single subculture their entire lives, and it’s in no way creepy or wrong for them to do so, especially when they’re mature, productive members of society. When I pointed out that industrial bands such as Skinny Puppy didn’t “grow out of” anything, same with Alice Cooper and Ozzy and all those aging rock star icons, Mama went, “Well, of course they can be like that, hun. That’s their job. Besides, celebrities can do whatever they want.” So basically, in my mother’s view, you either have to be young or a celebrity in order to be allowed to fully be yourself without it being unacceptable. Really? Really?

            Fuck that!

            I may not go to goth clubs for the rest of my life, but I will always be the half-mad, eccentric freak of nature you see/read before you. My tattoos won’t be rubbing off in ten years, and I’m pretty damn positive at least 9 out of my 10 piercings aren’t going anywhere. I may not be part of a subculture, and maybe years from now I’ll be tamer and more docile like a well-trained dog, but I will always be me, and I will always wear what I want when I want to. Just because I can’t write songs or act in movies doesn’t mean I have to meld into whatever little box society deems acceptable for someone my age. I’m going to embarrass the shit out of my grandkids because I’ll be blasting Psyclon Nine or Eminem or Manson while I bake them cookies and talk about the crazy ol’ days when we worried about Al Qaeda and gay marriage was illegal. My generation may put off settling down, but by age 24, I’m pretty sure that the majority of my personality is fixed and I won’t be doing any radical adolescent changes.

            Whoo. Okay. Calming down and moving on. In short, just because my generation does things differently doesn’t mean we’re radically immature. The Boomers thought Gen X was immature, who thinks we’re immature, blah, blah, blah. It’s a cycle, people, and it’s been going on forever. And also, subcultures are not always markers for immaturity or transitional identity.

            God dammit.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this!

            This has turned into a beast of a blog post. Holy shit. I’ll close with a couple of my parents’ lessons and opinions that don’t really apply to me or that I’m neutral about.

Buy American: This is all Daddy. Tell him you like VW Bugs and he’ll joke that you won’t be able to park in his driveway. Ask him about his buy American policy and he’ll go into a rant about stimulating the economy and foreign jobs until the vein in his forehead starts throbbing. I am not a political animal, not informed at all about this topic, so I remain completely and utterly neutral on this topic.

Workaholism is Fulfilling: My parents and my brother all work an inhuman amount of hours, the vast majority of their lives and down time, and find happiness. The workaholic gene just skipped right over me. I’m okay with working, but the thought of spending the vast majority of my life doing something I don’t want to do or don’t really care much about in order to pay bills is, as I already mentioned, a thick slice of Hell.

Fuck Doctors: Again, this one is all Daddy. He doesn’t apply this to everyone…just himself. I don’t think that man has been to a doctor as long as I’ve been alive. His typical response, “Ah, what’s the point? They’ll just tell me something’s wrong with me.” I may  not like doctors, but you better believe I go when I have to.

Martial Arts Balances the Mind: I agree with this wholeheartedly. It only doesn’t apply to me because I am the black sheep of my family in this department. My mother, my father, and my brother all have black belts and have actively participated in karate for years of their lives. I…am a belly dancer. Still, I know that if you’re looking for something to balance your mind, quell your temper, and diminish insecurities, the Martial Arts are the way to go.

            And with that, this gigantic post is completed. I love my family and the way I was raised. I wouldn’t ever, ever change a thing.

My parents did a damn good job.