About turn ! Keep up at the back, there.
No funnies here, and quite long so feel free to pass on by if you want.

My Dad was an overprotective nightmare. My mum was an unsociable clean freak who wouldn't let my friends into the house. So as a child -

I had one bedroom for sleeping in - done out to my mum's whims which looked like a princess's bedroom with all the things she couldn't have as a child herself, which was locked during the day so I couldn't mess it up.
Had one room for playing in, which was done out like a workshop with horrible scratchy industrial tiles on the floor, because apparently I was too messy to be allowed proper carpet. This was locked during the night.
Never had a sleep over. Never went to one either. Wasn't allowed fast food or fizzy drinks or peanut butter (don't know why I remember that especially) til I was sixteen.
My Dad would go to the end of our road and whistle - if I was out of range and didn't come running at this I would be grounded.
Grounded at fourteen for six months for going out one morning at nine and not returning until lunchtime. Mum panicked because she knew I was with a boyfriend (who she had met and knew) and thought he'd raped me and left me in a bush or some such nonsense.
Not allowed to go on dates, for example to the cinema, unless my dad took me there and picked me up after until I was seventeen.
Not allowed to get into my boyfriend's car at sixteen in case he crashed and killed us both - which became awkward when I started to work as a dj with him I can tell you.
Passed my driving test at eighteen but not allowed to drive in the snow - ever - in case I crashed.
And so on and so forth.

Left home at twenty and moved three hundred miles away. Dad told me if I left I was never to darken their door again. Cheers. Although he relents within two days and has me call him every day, or he calls me.
When I am twenty one, I don't answer the phone for three days because I am in bed with flu. Dad calls the local police and sends them around in case I'd been murdered or something. Didn't think to call my boyfriend, who I lived with, at his place of work and ask him if I was alright.

Fast forward to some years later. Dad leaves mum for someone else. Mum becomes dependent on me. Dad's daily phonecalls suddenly stop.

These days, twelve years later:
Mum wants me to pay all her bills because she won't get a debit card. She pays me back but often it takes a while !
Mum wants me to go and look at houses and flats with her, and sort paperwork out for her move.
Mum wants me to get grants to get work done on her house and fill in the relevant forms for her.
Mum wants me to do her food shopping online - she can't and won't use a computer.
Mum wants me to somehow magically make everything all right for her and gets pretty narky if I can't.
And never says thankyou for anything I do, and some of the things I do involve really going out of my way for her.

I've been registered blind for nine years due to a sudden severe sight loss which happened when I was living a hundred miles from home, and neither Mum nor Dad have ever asked me if I might need any help with anything to this day. They just assume its situation normal - they're not around enough to see any different. It has taken my fiance, who is totally blind, to actually set it out to my Mum that she can't hope for me to read her post and sort out cheques and bills, for example, as I actually have to have someone sighted read my own !

Dad hardly speaks to me - too busy with his new family - a daughter who he is in the process of smothering as he did me.

Over protective parents do an about turn in the end. I have no kids. I wouldn't want to turn into my parents !

Sorry for lack of funnies and whining and length. I love 'em and appreciate all the things they did do for me when I was growing up, but sometimes I could slap them.
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 10 Sep 2009, 20:56, 7 replies)

Wow.
Just wow. Having read your story I'm amazed by your last paragraph. Were I in your situation I don't think I'd be able to muster the same sentiment.

I know I can't add anything more useful or constructive, so I won't embarrass myself by trying.
( john3ners has relocated to the Highlands, Thu 10 Sep 2009, 22:19, closed)

*hug*
I know you are just sharing, but i felt like you deserved one.
(StyX is staring at you, yes YOU!!!, Fri 11 Sep 2009, 0:14, closed)

I don't "like" this
but I will click it!
(xerophytic has no idea, Fri 11 Sep 2009, 9:30, closed)

:(
that is all.
( spesh., Fri 11 Sep 2009, 11:41, closed)

Have a *hug*
and a *click* for the last paragraph. My parents were bad, but not as bad as this and I can't even honestly say that I wholeheartedly love and appreciate them.
(berk, Fri 11 Sep 2009, 12:09, closed)

:(
I don't know how you can still "appreciate" these people. Love them, yes, because that's harder to get rid of even when someone is being a royal cunt. Kudos.
(The Apeface Cherub is not a cunty-uber-cunt, Fri 11 Sep 2009, 12:13, closed)

:O
peanut butter?

how awful

I do not know what to say. It makes my complaints pale into nothing
(whiskas loved by 8 out of 10 cats, Sat 12 Sep 2009, 10:27, closed)