The Three Golden Rules to Happiness...
1. Never leave home
2. Never get married
3. Don't have kids

I tell this to everyone younger than myself, as did the wise Irishman who passed his wisdom to me. He'd recently battered his wife, been evicted and his kids hated him for it.
(minky, Wed 6 May 2009, 19:19, Reply)

I'm 25 years old.......
I have been in possession of my current mobile phone number for 4 years.

However, I have never managed to remember it.

Today, I took a leaf out of my father's book and produced a DYMO label sporting my number and stuck it to the back of my mobile phone in case someone asks for my number.

I'm not quite turning into my parents but I fear it's down hill from here. Thats is all.
(Sir_Digby_Chicken_Caeser [email protected], Wed 6 May 2009, 19:15, 4 replies)

I make my children play Dungeons & Dragons.
It's character-building.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Wed 6 May 2009, 18:57, 2 replies)

It's begun
I walk into the kitchen and have no idea what I went in there for, I spend literally some minutes looking for things that are in my pocket or even worse my hand. My waist size overtook my inside leg measurement for the first time last year. I now use farts as a weapon instead of being embarrassed.

I fear that at a future social event I may attempt the Chuck Berry "Duck Walk"
(danceswithferrets is leaking sanity, Wed 6 May 2009, 18:37, 1 reply)

I'm morphing into a hideous hybrid of both parents,
incorporating the worst features of each.
From him:
Piss poor pessimistic attitude, haemorrhoids, chronic depression and a beer belly.

From her:
Physically I'm more like my mother with each passing week. From top to toe, let's start with thinning grey hair. That's not so bad with the right haircut and dye. Next come the wrinkly eyebags, jowls and wattle. YSL Touche Eclat helps with the dark circles, otherwise gravity is winning.

Then we have the wobbly dinner lady arms (I hate having to wave at anyone, because when doing so the velocity/weight ratio feels like the flab will continue to spin around 10 minutes after waving is finished).

As we progress downwards we arrive at the wide-angle, flabby, dimpled arse. Which emits the fowlest killer farts this side of the Mason-Dixon line (just ask The Grammar Badger, bless her heart). Not only do these farts have teeth, they also escape in the manner of a machine gun, especially when descending stairs.

Arthritis in both hips makes me waddle like a disabled hippo.

Further down, there are the thunder thighs. Orange peel cellulite? Oh no, my mother has given me special needs enlarged golf ball skin here. Not to mention the varicose veins (in summer I have to co-ordinate skirt colour with said veins - pretty purples, blues and dark pinks).

But by far the worst of all, I found myself making that peculiar tutting/exclamation sound she makes with her plastic teeth recently. And my teeth are still real.

Great galloping gonads, I'm going downhill fast.

EDIT/
The whole point of this post was to er....... what was it again?
Ummmmmmmmmmm...... bugger, I forgot.
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Wed 6 May 2009, 18:04, 16 replies)

You're not turning into your parents until
you're on a night out and see a policeman -

and get less nervous.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 6 May 2009, 17:43, 3 replies)

I'm getting more like Dads...
Because I f**ked your Mum.

Just like he did.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Wed 6 May 2009, 16:55, 1 reply)

My dad's a part-time radio DJ
He plays old rock'n'roll & doo wop, that sort of stuff.

I've always found it embarrassing to hear him blathering away on his show so I've avoided it like the plague when browsing the old FM dial.

One day I was searching for something good to listen to and by mistake found I'd stumbled onto his programme - and worst still my mum was on there too.

That's right kids - I realised I'd tuned into my parents.

*dies*
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 6 May 2009, 16:35, 5 replies)

Football games
Me and my dad have been going to watch the football since i was 9 years old.

The first question he would ask me was whether i can see both goals ok, would i like to swap seats etc as i was a proper scrawny midget back then.

I'm now 25 and half a foot taller than him. A few weeks back i found myself offering to swap seats with him as he couldnt quite see one of the goals past the supporting pillar.

Lost 3 nil and it was the last game at the old ground so it won't happen again :-(

Guess we all just become a parents at some stage, thought i might have had a decade or two before it happened though!
(groovytommy, Wed 6 May 2009, 16:05, 5 replies)

My childhood
When I was a child I spent my summers over on the continent; my dad was an engineer and would usually find work somewhere hot and sunny. I remember when I was a child I'd be woken early by the beating hot sun streaming in through the gaps in the blinds like a laser beam. And the incredible heat. I'd get up, have a shower, and then run outside to meet up with my new friends. Every summer I started to learn a different language. Now that I'm in my thirties I can swear fluently in five languages, which comes in really handy when I'm trawling through the rush hour in central London.

One summer I was out in Spain and my mate, Juan, dared me to play this game with him. I wasn't too hot on the Spanish at this time, but thought I got the gist of it. I agreed to play this dangerous game with my little friend, Juan. So we went down to the canal, slipped off our shoes and slid into the warm, brakish water. And then we started hunting. The trick to it was to step very gently forward, your arms dangling out in front of you in the water, and then when you felt something move you flipped quickly to see if you could dislodge your quarry onto the canal bank. But we wern't hunting fish, that would've been too easy. We were hunting vipers which would hide under the water where it was cooler until the sun had relented a little.

Juan and I did the snake hunting all day. I very nearly got bitten a few times. Thinking back I'm amazed that I didn't. I mean, I didn't have a clue about snakes.

And what's this got to do with my dad? Well, he tells completely random stories too that don't seem to have any relevance at all to what he's been asked.
(Big Grant, Wed 6 May 2009, 15:48, 3 replies)

Well then
I remember when I was a young un' and my pop would say to me, he'd say:

"Good idea, if you keep making them faces the wind will change and you'll be stuck like that forever". This was back in the days when the wind could do that sort of thing, didn't have any of these fancy eye-phones or that boom boom banging music rubbish back then! Dont know how lucky they are them kids...

Back in my day the only music you could get was what you made yourself, in between shifts in't mill. 18 hours a day I used to work for a threpny bit and I was happy for that. Used to whistle, and that was enough for us. Honest days work for an honest days pay ahhhp. Never had none of this credit crunch neither back then, none of them bankers fleecing you, better off keeping yer money under the bed...

I ties me socks in a knot now n' keep em under the bed. Stops the elastic going you see, dont make elastic like they used too. Used to be that things were made to last, I remember buying a spade back in 43, needed to tend to the garden n' keep them pesky cats out the vegetables, still going strong! And... um...


Sorry i've completely forgotten what I was trying to say...


*EDIT* - Oh wait... Nah, gone again
(Is this a good idea? ... Yes this is definitely a good idea, Wed 6 May 2009, 15:22, Reply)

Not a turning into my parents story, but about getting old nonetheless....
My kids (9 & 11) go to a running club. Some parents go along as well for a bit of exercise. I decided to give it a go this week, so I probed the dark recesses of my wardrobe to locate my Nike Air Pegasus - purchased around 1995.

"What are they dad?" the kids piped up.

"These are my running trainers", I proudly proclaimed, "these are older than you guys, but still in tip top condition, just like myself!"

Off we went, at a gentle canter.

My beloved trainers started to fall apart just after the first bend. The rear half of one sole decided to come half undone, creating an enormous "SCHLAP"-ing sound as I stumbled round the rest of the course.

I'm not going back next week.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Wed 6 May 2009, 14:34, Reply)

telling off
I said to one of my kids the other day, "If you drop that and bust it, your mum will go light.".

I've not a clue where it comes from, but I know what it implies. But it's what my dad used to say to me under similar circumstances.

I also sometimes say "ee-li-wa", which is Korean for "come here", and is one of the phrases my dad brought back from his stint in Korea in the early 50s.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:22, 1 reply)

shed
I'm also satisfied that my garden shed now smells of oil, creosote, wood shavings and another familiar smell that I can't quite place but remember from my Dad's shed.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:14, 2 replies)

more garden
I'm quite satisfied with the new wheelbarrow I bought last week. After spending half the afternoon visiting various DIY stores and garden centres.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:11, Reply)

the other day
when the sun was out, on a whim I decided to dismantle the lawnmower, sit on the back doorstep and proceeded to stroke the blade with an oilstone for well over an hour.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:09, 4 replies)

getting old
I'm only 36. I don't find any girls under the age of maybe 25 as attractive, as they're too young in my opinion.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:07, 2 replies)

Appreciation
for slippers and dressing gowns, Geoff Wayne's War of the Worlds, dismay over my rapidly receding hairline, driving at 20mph instead of 30mph in residential areas (as my dad used to tell me, "It's a speed limit, not a speed target"), correcting other peoples driving, tutting at public displays of affection between couples - there's a time and a place, a fondness of real ales and decent single malts, refusing to go to nightclubs "because when I go out with my friends I like to be able to hold a conversation", despair when lights are left on in a room when no one is in there (not that I currently pay the 'leccy bill), talking politics, watching Newsnight in bed, correcting people on their spelling and grammar, keeping my tools in an orderly fashion so that I can find them when I next need them, not being able to see my tool because of the expanding waistline, fostering a hatred of cats and devising ever more elaborate ways of stopping them shitting on the flower beds, finding Carol Vorderman shaggable, finding Kate Bush shaggable, finding Barbara Windor shaggable, referring to 18 year old blondes as 'totty', being thankful when it rains because it'll be good for the lawn, hangovers that last until 6pm and wearing a tweed flatcap.

I'll be 23 in July......

BTW-my dad listens to Muse, Pulp and various other favourites of mine, is extremely computer literate and has an appreciation of fast cars and fast currys. Perhaps the next QOTW should be 'turning into your kids'?
(Sir General ***WoW***, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:03, 5 replies)

At what age
does placing a newspaper under your arm and loudly exclaiming 'I'm off for a shit' to the entire room/office regardless of who's sitting there become perfectly acceptable?
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Wed 6 May 2009, 14:00, 1 reply)

Following on from one of my previous posts on this qotw.
So spurned on by this topic today I finally get round to going to Asda to replace the several pairs of knackered and oversize jog pants that I wear around the house. Would you believe it, they don't sell them any more which is when I remember that I bought them about 10 years ago : /
( girlinthehole, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:59, 5 replies)

Not my parents, but my son.
Every father thinks how wonderful it would be to have their son grow up like them, but this recent article on the BBC News web site made me realise that's not what I want, not in the slightest, not given my frame of mind in recent years. It finally made me get off my arse, go to the doc and do something about it. Only a couple of days later and things have already improved (SSRIs can work), my little boy has said he loves me even more now I'm less grumpy.

I know it's not funny, it's not entertaining, but to me it beats pretty much everything I've read this year.
( SteamedCleaner, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:42, 6 replies)

At my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary...
...my mother's godmother, 'S' hadn't seen us all for a good 20 years or so. I'm reliably informed she'd been pre-gaming with the other dust-farters (stolen from the brilliant Mandrill) which may explain the following.
My sister and I had been getting the venue ready - only the most fun jobs for us young 'uns! We were both excessively warm – the heating was set to a temperature more commonly found three feet above molten lava – and exhausted, as my sisters one-year-old crotchfruit doesn’t travel well and had chosen to make his displeasure known several times an hour -every fucking hour- between approximately 2am and 7am.

Finally the venue is ready; the guests arrive and the wine begins to flow.
As my sister and I are recuperating (definitely not dozing…) in a quiet corner, S rushes up to my older sister and exclaims 'Denise! (for that is my mother's name) How lovely to see you - you look well!'.

I’ve never seen someone so tired move so fast. My sister span round with a face like a slapped arse, and spat 'it's Natalie, actually - I'm Denise's eldest.'
A look of buttock-trembling horror crept across S’ flushed and powdered face.
‘oooh. Erm. Hello, dear! It’s, err, been a while. How have you been, Natasha?’
‘Natalie. And I’m fine thankyou. Denise is over there.’
They flee in opposite directions, and I realise S hasn’t even recognised me.

To be fair, that isn’t that unusual. There’s an relatively nice photo from that evening of the womenfolk; my gran, my mum, my sister and myself. You can plainly see the family resemblance in their faces; it's almost uncanny, like some kind of special effect. Except for me.

I look like the child they got from the orphanage.

I count myself lucky though. My sister knows exactly what she'll look like in 20 years time...
(berk, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:41, Reply)

Things I've caught myself doing
1) Referring to any group of people talking to one another on the street or in a park under the age of twenty as "A gang of kids".

2) Making noises as I get into or out of chairs.

3) Wanting modern music to have 'words' and 'tunes you can hum'.

4) Spending more and more time in my shed sitting on a stool listening to Smooth Radio while wearing my 'shed coat' invariably fixing a broken plug or searching for my Jig-saw blades (I still haven't found 'em).

5) Owning a broken classic motorcycle I will DEFINITELY fix. Any day now. Just need to get the parts ordered. And time off work to finish it.

6) Buying almost ANYTHNG, be it a Cow garden ornament, toy bi-plane or novelty lighter, because it amuses me and is only a pound!

7) Owning more clothes (and getting more each birthday/Christmas) than I'll ever be able to wear.

8) KNOWING beards are the final word in rugged-manliness/looking knowledgable about things.

*I've just put some Rage Against the Machine on to prove to myself I'm not completely 'past it'. I've just looked at the date is was released...I seem to remember my dad doing something similar with Motorhead albums and saying that the music in my yoof (the eighties) was rubbish.
( Funkenschlag still likes dogs more than cats, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:31, 7 replies)

In the last couple of years i've started to develop holes in socks quite quickly.
I mean sometimes holes would appear within two or three wearings (I'm not sure of the official unit of sock usage measurement so we shall use wearings for the point of this rant).

This never used to happen and I can only put it down to either increasing volumes of hard rough skin on my feet or the kevlar/razor like substance that seems to grow where normal toenails once grew. The younger sneep would merely bin the holey socks or simply keep wearing them until at least 3 toes started poking out of the holes. The current older sneep instead found himself only last week turning to his wife and asking 'Love, do you know how to darn socks?'

For the record she told me to 'Go f*ck yourself'.

I cry for the lost art of darning and increasing sock costs i incur.

PS:- My wife also bought me a nose hair shaver last christmas but I have refused to use it and was extremely insulted she bought it. However, I now find myself in the bathroom with tears streaming down my cheek like a professional onion cutter as I try to pluck the ever increasing nose hair using my fingers. Soon I'll have to go and open the shaver box...weep
( sneep used to date Freddie Starr's hamster, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:24, 3 replies)

Not much to add this week...
...as I'm not displaying any particularly damning or comedic traits of either of my parents, but what I have got of thiers can be summed up thusly:

DAD - sadly deceased now, but I inherited his temper, his hairline (though he never went bald which is reassuring), his appreciation of an honest day's work and a respectably-sized wang. At least I'm hoping that last one didn't come from my mum.

MUM - inherited her brains, her imagination, a small portion of her staggering artistic ability and her compassion (which has took a bit of a beating over the years, but I still have some left).

As for compulsions to acquire gardening equipment or thermal underwear, worry incessantly (oh, but my mum does that enough for the entire fucking world), admire the works of those artists involved in the 60's Liverpool sound (aside from the Beatles of course - how can you not?) or many other traits that are the hallmark of my mater and pater, I seem to be folllowing my own path on that score.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Wed 6 May 2009, 13:05, Reply)

TEN THINGS TO AVOID
I've been thinking about my old man this week and I thank the good lord Buddha and all his little helper monkies that I'm not turning into him. But I've made a checklist of warning signs that I'm going to laminate and keep in my wallet in an effort to prevent the fucking inevitable; morphing into my dad.

ONE
If my phone rings after 9PM I WILL NOT immediately assume someone's been involved in an accident and start running round the flat in a panic - it's perfectly normal for people to ring after the watershed; the phonelines are not automatically switched off at this time.

TWO
If an attractive girlie happens to be in my vicinity I WILL NOT let my stomach hang out and absently jiggle with my bollocks whilst similtaniously scratching my arse.

THREE
At NO POINT in my life will I feel the want, need or desire to purchase a metal detector.

FOUR
I will NEVER shout at the weather person on the TV and say: "Ha! You got it wrong yesterday! You promised rain and all we got was sun!" The person on the TV screen cannot, in point of fact, hear you and even if they did they really wouldn't give a rats toss in hell that they had somehow upset your busy afternoon plans of pottering round the house and watching Murder She Wrote.

FIVE
I will NEVER in my life sit down for a nice chat with a mate about some operation or medical procedure they've just undergone (unless this involves STD's - which are, quite frankly, funny as fuck, or possibly some gory motorcycle-related injury involving stupidity or the excessive and creative application of marijuana). I am not and never will be interested in how someone self-catherterizes themselves or takes pills to control their rampant blood pressure.

SIX
If occasion requires that I wear a tie I won't EVER do the fucker up so the end is a considerable distance from the top of my trousers. This makes you look like a spectacular retard.

SEVEN
At no time in my life will I be proud of my lawn or show off my lawnmower to make other people envious.

EIGHT
If I ever start singing along to the musak they play in supermarkets, please shoot me. On the fucking spot.

NINE
At no point in my life EVER will I attend a dinner party.

TEN
Before a night out I will NEVER worry that I don't know if the place I'm visiting has comfortable seating and a nice quiet area. I may just as well bring along some fucking knitting and a pair of plaid slippers. And worrying over pointless shit is, well, just a bit old.

I shall keep this list close to my heart at all times - just next to the packet of Werthers Originals and my pipe; the sort Sherlock Holmes himself would be proud to whip out on special crime-solving occasions.
( SpankyHanky, Wed 6 May 2009, 11:42, 21 replies)

Shitting myself.
Whilst pondering whether to buy green or red grapes in Tesco I felt a nice fart brewing, quick strain and 'uhoh' hot and squirty. I clenched my buttocks and did a mincing pas de deux out to the car. The sensation of it squishing around on a bumpy road is interesting. Now something has changed, before I would relish a good fart, it runs in our family, but now when I feel like one I tentatively let it out hoping it's just a smell.
( Brandy_Bumwinkle, Wed 6 May 2009, 10:36, Reply)

When I was a wee nipper
my Dad's farts used to stink to high hell of Brown sauce. I bloody hated brown sauce, but as he enjoyed slapping the stuff on anything that moved before shoving it down his neck (I say fellows, steady on...) he thought it was hilarious.
Now, every now and again, one of my bottom burps will smell of HP sauce, and it fills me with childish glee. I bloody love brown sauce, me.

Farts shouldn't make you think of food, surely...?
(Paolo Nutini's Bikini Better than Frederick Fleet's optometrist, Wed 6 May 2009, 8:41, 3 replies)

The Signs
Over several years of observation, I have managed to identify three clear stages of "oldness", the onset of which should serve as a definite warning you are turning into your parents:

STAGE ONE
A complete loss of ability to work electronic devices and appliances, even ones you could previously work. I have already entered this phase (am now 37) and if I want to record a programme on the DVD I have to get the instructions out (obviously carefully filed in the "Instructions" folder) and spend twenty minutes sitting cross legged on the floor grappling with the remotes, swearing etc. After this time, my wife (who is 31 and has not yet entered this cycle of oldness-onset) walks over and does it in 10 seconds.

STAGE TWO
A sudden and chronic sensitivity to drafts, associated with an irrational fear of getting "cricks" as a result (e.g. "Let's not sit too near the door, I will get a crick in my neck"). It seems to me that for at least 35 years, cricks / drafts are not an issue, and like most people I have thrown caution to the wind, and taken a "devil may care" attitude to the crick related perils posed by partially open windows, unstopped door cracks etc. This stage usually concludes with the wholesale purchase of a dozen "snakes" for preventing those nasty drafts coming under the door and wracking your body with cricks.

STAGE THREE
This is the "nail in the coffin" stage typified by believing anything that people more than 20 years younger than you say. Despite your utter amazement at these snippets of information you believe, you must at all times contain your enthusiasm and respond only with "that's nice dear" in a deadpan manner. Of course, when in the company of other dust-farters later on, you can excitedly regale them with the news.

Personally, I am beginning to show signs of Stage Two Oldness setting in (it feels like there's a window open in here somewhere). Alas, if only I had stayed on top of programming the video.
(Mandrill, Wed 6 May 2009, 5:56, 6 replies)

I'm completely beyond all help...
...as I'm not turning into my parents, thankfully.

I'm turning into my grandparents :(

I'm slowly turning into a tightwad, trawling round the local ASDA at 3.30pm on a Sunday to find all the chilled meat that goes out of date that day so I can get it for 30p rather than £4.50, getting the cheapest brand of whatever I need to save 10p here and 20p there, when I used to just buy the stuff that tasted the nicest or was the most expensive.

There's other things as well, little stupid things that you don't notice til a QOTW like this comes up: constantly flicking channels on the Sky (my grandfather is famous within my family for doing this), telling my better half to drive slowly, a lack of enthusiasm to go out "clubbing".

However, what's really making the world turn upside down...they're turning into me. Facebook profiles, email jokes, MSN accounts, Online Banking, watching porn online (sitting on your nan's computer and typing the letter "p" into Firefox only to be confronted with "Mature Woman takes it up the arse!" is fucking scary). Next thing I know, they'll be lurking here like I was. That's a fucking scary thought.

*first post. feel free to torture me.*
(TheUnthinkingMinority needs some new music to listen to., Wed 6 May 2009, 5:11, 2 replies)