ooh ooh, excitement! people are ....wait for it..... following me! and in turn i can follow them, now that i know they exist! its like one big stalker circle where everyone can follow everyone around forever and ever! wooh!
and with the word "wooh" i am sadly brought to the topic of my mother. again.
"wooh" reminded me simply because i said "woot" rather unenthusiastically when she said something i was supposed to be excited about, but clearly wasnt. i cant remember what it was, but when i responded with a dull "woot", mom turned to me with a funny look on her face and was like "what does that mean?" My dad, who is slightly less out of it than her, looks up from his book and says "Christy, it means 'whippie.'" he made sure to say it with a look that made it clear he was holding back laughter. she is such the joke of the family. always out of the loop, with the illusion of control.
sadly, she actually does have some control, since she grounded both my brother and me for a week. dad, who felt out pain but could do nothing about it but turn a blind eye, strangely seemed to disappear whenever visitors came over during this grounding. he is so helpless - subject to the woman, the queen of the house. we men never do anything at all apparently. she came home and all the things she didnt tell us to do werent done! so naturally, we were grounded for not balancing our lives correctly. all play and no work, she said. now, to be fair, she's quite right. i avoid work whenever possible until the very last possible minute, but she didnt exactly tell us to accomplish anything that day. so we both went out and played. hung out with friends. went out to eat. all the things teenagers do during the summer. but can we get away with normal things? surely not in the household my mother upholds. normal... what an absurd thought. we cant be normal, no sir. thats simply not permitted. we must rise above normal blah blah blah blah.
we've probably all heard the speech. i won't reiterate.
but theres a second part to all this that you dont know about. my mother is a dreadful grounder. a little sweet talking and begging here and there goes a long way. her mind says be mad, but her heart wont let her keep her promised grounding for more than a day or two. so by saturday, she tentatively approved things like birthday parties and hanging out with friends and just plain leaving the house.
my whole family gives off a slowly fading image of perfection. we used to eat together every night at the dinner table and talk about our days and all that. my parents always smiled and complimented each other and the two sons; we all got along great. now its becoming clear that perfection is not the word for our family. it could be that our family is falling apart slowly, but i think its more that i'm just getting older and more objective about things, instead of accepting that mommy and daddy are faultless gods. now little kyle can see how mad mommy gets when daddy runs to his friends house 3 times in a week to have fun, since he clearly doesnt have any when he's under her Nazi rule in his own house. and little kyle can see the impatience mounting in mommy whenever a nasty kid leaves another sock in the kitchen or another shoe by the door, and that she's always preparing to go volcanic on those bratty kids again if she finds just one more... but mostly, what i've come to realize is that its not mommy and daddy, as a single. but mom and then dad, two very different people with different views and different friends and philosophies and roles. apparently, they either used to agree on everything, or they compromised behind the kids' backs and came to some agreement and enforced together. its the perfect plan... till the kid catches on. then it looks more like dad is reluctantly following the nazi's orders and the nazi has shamefully realized that she hates herself for being so controlling.
anyway, these are the musings of a sleep deprived teenager, so try not to analyze them too much or anything, but you gotta admit. its got some truth. your family is probably similar. maybe flip flop the roles, maybe take away a kid or add a few, but i think that from the kids perspective, all families stop being perfect as you grow up and become self aware. parents arent just parents; theyre people too. and even people with steady jobs and a secure home and mostly stable family have problems that they cant always hide. even to their own kids, eventually.
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