Reminder
Hmmm,

Apologies for being quiet, but I've been lurking as I had a boarding school upbringing, so all my school memories have been beaten out of my - a la Christian Brothers (Look it up)

/tangent

My parents are from Mauritius 1st Generation and all that so they were trying very hard to fit in - why, oh why they moved to a village in Lincolnshire I don't know (normal=7 fingers on 1 hand...) - sorry tangent again....

Anyhooo

I was banned from being cool. Completely - Dad cut my hair, clothes were from the market, I had no local friends as I was away, I wasn't allowed out for more than an hour (had to check back in), etc.

But I was also asked, even up 'til the age of about 23, whether I wanted to "look like I was west Indian?". Who the hell cares and how do you quantify it? In hindsight and looking at the photos, I just looked like a twat, but that's another story.

Not to mention "Am I trying to look african?" - Sure Mum. Sure.

I mean, really.....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 17:11, Reply)

I'm lonely - read me.
Two things…

Firstly, I was interviewing staff for a dead-end call centre job in Bristol, basically, if you turned up and could spell your own name and had English as a language you were vaguely familiar with, I'd take you on.

Anyway, owing to the nature of the calls these monkeys would be taking, a shift system was in place, with the late shift finishing at midnight.

So, I interview this lad, I think he was about 20(ish) and came across as a bit of a geezer, bundles of confidence and seemed to have the enthusiasm that would keep him happy with the job for about 3 months, rather than the usual '3 weeks'.

I'm wrapping up the interview and I'm explaining the salary, benefits and the shift system and the conversation went like this.

ME: Well, that's pretty much that, you've impressed during the IV, and I'd like to offer you a job
BLOKE: Cool although I can't confirm today if I'll be able to take it.

(Now I thinking he wants more money or he's got another offer on the table).

ME: OK, is there anything you'd like me to confirm before you leave to help you with the decision?
BLOKE: Oh, it's nothing like that, it's just that I need to speak to my Mum and Dad first as if these shifts don't finish until midnight, I'll need them to OK it, as I have to be home by 10pm during the week, they think that 10pm is late enough for anyone to be out at night.

Honestly - if you have parents like that, and you are in your early 20's - don't tell anyone - especially if you have just been interviewed by them.

As it happens, he accepted the job and his dad picked him up when the late shift finished.

In other news….. I've got a mate who wasn't allowed to go swimming with school, 'in case they want us to go in the deep end' (his mum had this theory that you'd not get into any difficulty if you stayed in the shallow end.)

Some people are right mentalists.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 16:45, Reply)

Ooh, another.
To this day, I am 'not allowed' on our local park in case I bump into 'bigger boys'.

Pfft I'm 24 and I'm sure 30 odd year olds don't go cruising round parks looking for young lads....
( FlexAlux laughed at something inappropriate on, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 16:17, Reply)

Hair gel
My mum wouldn't let me have any hair products at all whilst I was a kid in the 80s. Her reason: my hair would fall out.

However, genetically, I had three bald grandparents so the odds on keeping my hair wasn't good.

It had virtually GONE by 22.

We joke about it now but I could have been cool, I could.
( whelkboy is old now, you see, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 16:03, Reply)

African Mum (A mate of mine)
At 11 years old one of his many tasks was take the family washing down to the launderette and get it all sorted.

This obviously took a while, so in order to make use of his time while he waited, he was instructed to read a newspaper.

On which, he would face questions when he returned home. The newspaper was The Times.
(Eertamai, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 15:53, Reply)

Farty Towels
My parents used to change the channel for the opening sequence of Fawlty Towers in case the sign said something mildly rude.

The rest of the programme was fair game though... random beatings of a little spanish bloke, people dying in hotels, insensitivity about the war....etc
( FlexAlux laughed at something inappropriate on, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 15:50, Reply)

African Dad
Was never allowed to do or have anything that might give people the wrong impression of me. Things like get a trendy haircut, stay out past 5 in the afternoon or even have Nike or Adidas trainers. Why? In case people thought I was a West Indian!! God forbid that I was mistaken for a Jamaican.

So anytime I was wanting to do something that my Dad didn’t like, it was always rejected and then finished off, with the standard signature of “Do you want people to think you’re a West Indian?”

Going back to the trainers, all shoes had to be from Clarks. My Mum was obsessed with them as “they’re the only place where they measure your feet properly.” Woman, who gives a shit if my shoes don’t fit to the exact nanometre, I just want to be cool.

I would protest and protest, and finally, when I was about 13, she relented, on the condition she took me to buy them from Woolworths instead. Madness.
(Eertamai, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 15:45, Reply)

this was just stupid
my mom wouldn't let us watch "Salute Your Shorts" because the theme song had the word "fart" in it.
(deilbfe6ogcshnbcryjh, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 15:31, Reply)

mad uncles
my mad uncle being a CAUC as in a complete and utter, was a plod & believed that at 12 I smoked, so would handcuff me behind the sofa (arms & ankles) so's I couldn't see Dr. Who, then bend my fingernails back until I confessed to smoking (thank god there were no plod shop stairs handy) then grass on me to my folks who found his antics hilarious....I still hate the CAUC to this day, hopefully I'll get to tramp the dirt down.

lenght: six feet long & six feet down
(mickturate if i could be arsed i'd be bored, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 15:27, Reply)

My son, a fellow b3tan,
reckons he tells his university friends that his wicked mother tortured him all through his childhood.

'I was allowed to watch Gladiators. Well, I could listen to it through the cellar door' sort of thing.

A few years ago, we noticed a little girl charging round a shop, making a pest of herself, ignored by her nearby mother.

I said, look at her! YOU never behaved like that when YOU were a kid! He replied, no, you'd have smashed a bottle and held it out at face level for me to run into...

Too glib by half.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:54, Reply)

Not strict
Or at least it would seem judging by most your stories. I was allowed GTA when i was about 12 even though the man in the shop told my mum it wasn't a 'racing game' like she thought (plus my dad had already got me a cracked copy off a collegue and watched me play it, he formatted and lost the disk though). I could watch practically anything on tv as long as they couldn't hear it late at night (had a telly in my room). Even that didn't really matter because i was intelligent enough to work the timer on the vcr.

Only thing that my parents made me do was things I tried and decided were shit, apparently as a kid its important to do things you don't want to, even though once you grow up you will spend the next 45 bastard years doing just that.

I can't wait until i retire and can do exactly what i want. Actually it will be a bit like i am right now, except i won't have tutorials that clash with diagnosis murder.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:37, Reply)

the hair thing again
someone's post reminded me.

when i was a little commie (about 8) i had an unkempt mop of dark hair. i loved my hair. i remember my mum deciding i looked like "the son of a beggar" (her words!) and taking me to get it cut. probobly would'nt have been so bad apart from all that sunday school nonsense (her idea again) about samson and his hair.

cue me repeatedly trying to escape the barbers screaming and crying, and when the evil deed was finished, not talking to anyone for a few sullen days.

incidentally, i have had a number 1/2 haircut for the last 6 years now....
(russianroulette23 Nastrowya towarichi!, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:34, Reply)

manhunt!
My mum once threw a demonic inquest into how one of the dining room chairs had been hacked at by a knife!



turned out, though, that that was the damage resulting from her knocking it through a window...



rrr...

it doesn't help that no matter what I do, i never seem to have a recollection of it. =(
(ApacheRoflcopter Rofpmlmfaool since, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:26, Reply)

Sweary words
I can imagine lots of kids aren't allowed to swear in front of their parents (or, strictly speaking, not at all), but my Mum took this one step further by banning the following words from being uttered:

Knickers (had to say pants instead)
Bum (had to say bottom)
Fart (poop)
Pregnant (expecting a baby)

I think I win.
(Mad McMad, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:22, Reply)

The 'Bad Un'
When i was 16, my mother banned me from moving out of the family home and into a communal gaff/squat that most of my lot lived in and was pretty much an hour upon hour party due to it's proximity to the night clubs.

Got my own back though, am 24 and proving harder to shift than genital herpes, and sometimes, I wander round the house with a tape measure with the expressed reason of working out where my stuff goes when they peg it.

Tiz a nice house.

Oh, they also banned me and my little bro playing wwf in the house following my piledriving him off the top bunk and him needing medical attention. (Still pinned him for the three before I called them upstairs though).

Length, Girth, Skill? A Jedi Needs not these things
( BulldogUgly Visit my profile to see what's between my legs, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:06, Reply)

My parents aren't that bad, really
...so have some art studenty anecdotes.

An old friend of mine is currently at Cheltenham Uni, doing some kind of foundation course thingy before she goes on to do a proper degree. Next year she wants to go to a different uni, so recently she's been scuttling off to all these places for interviews and the like...she had an interview at Leicester about a month ago, but because she's never been to Leicester before her mother actually paid for me to go with her.

All I did all day was sit in the student union reading, drinking and being hit on by uni boys. (Lisa is 19; I'm nearly a year younger. When I asked whether her mother wasn't worried about me being on my own in a strange town - I'd never been there before either - she said 'of course not! You can look after yourself.' Which is true, but I have to question her confidence in her firstborn.)

This is the same mother who won't let her daughter access websites from her home computer unless I've been on them before, because of viruses, and who wouldn't let her come for a night out in Birmingham for my 18th because there are 'too many black people' there.

It's not just a one-off either; I've come to the conclusion that parents of all art students are as mad as badgers. Apparently a group of Cheltenham arty types were planning an outing to Birmingham, during which they planned to stay over at Lisa's place, but it was called off because one of them wasn't allowed to go to sleepovers despite having been living away from home for the last six months.

Length? God knows they need it.
(Shinigami, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 13:00, Reply)

TO be Fair
my parents were/are pretty laid back, obviously they had their rules (eat all your greens, dont watch TV in the dark, go brush your teeth etc....) but overall I was never really banned from anything....until...

its the early/mid 90's and baby-bamaged has just heard about this great new television show, its apparently that good, and the girl in it is that hot, that if I didnt want the next episode I would be a social lepper. The program?- x-files.

Now, ok, I can understand why, at first glance, parents would ban a child from watching this (well, a 9/10 yearold at that...). It wasnt until my parents asked a family friend what exactly x-files was, and watched an episode, just to make sure it was ok, and I was allowed to watch it. Oh the joy of being popular again. All this, despite, at the tender age of 10 being fairly in to the paranorma- more so then your average 10 year old, and often with the rents paying ofr paranormal material (do any of you remember the x-file guides that came out, with absoloutly no affiliation with the show????)

The same thing also happened with The Excorcist ( i didnt actually watch this, until i was 17) because my dad had seen it in a late night viewing at the cinema, and he shat himself. So it wasnt until it was show on Channel 4 that I was able to watch it. I laughed, at thought it was pretty lame, but at the time, when my dad was a kid, I could understand how it would have shit him up.

There was a couple of other things as well, I couldnt watch The Simpsons when it first came on (thanks dad) but that soon changed, after channel 2 decided to show it at 6pm, so obviously, then it had to be ok!

And if we refused to eat out food, we wouldnt be able to leave the table until it was finished, no matter how cold it got. There were times when a resoluted baby-bamaged used to sit there for hours, and hours, numb legs and everything until they gave in, bwhahaha.

My parents always ran the 'no drugs' rule, which i'm not interested in anyway. As for drinking, When I was younger it never really interested me, I hit 18, and now I think I keep the AA in business (not the motor company!)

I was always able to watch ITV *gasps, shock horror...* gladiators was encouraged, as well as watching wrestling (I sometimes still watch it now, you all know shawn michaels will win at All Grown Up), I think I must have been one of the few kids to watch the "lesbian" kiss on Brookside (the first ever 'before-the'water-shed' lesbian kiss to be screened in the UK!)

Length- do the word count yourself.
(drain_bamaged, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 12:21, Reply)

Banned from touching the walls
My geriatric mother has an obsession with cleanliness.
She writes notes and sticks them around our house including:
"please wash your hands with soap"
"put the lid down" (INSIDE the toilet)
"shut all doors quitely"
and my personal favourite being
"do not touch the walls"

Also, her reason for one of my mates not aloud in the house:
"he is greasy"

Also my father hit me when I wanted to take beauty therapy at GCSE. Now, I thank him for that.

Got banned from Tescos too 4yrs ago but that wasnt my parents, that was Tesco. Apparently they dont like 15 yr olds taking 2litres of Vodka without paying. Meh.

Wooyay! 1st postage!
(YellowBellie is an amateur, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 11:48, Reply)

He likes it wide open
by the way..

Don't use the QOTW for private chat. That's what the 'message me' button is for. BTW: "Reply to this thread" option coming soon.
(waxdart hello., Tue 13 Mar 2007, 11:35, Reply)

no story, just poetry
.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

[...]

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse


... parents are people too, y'know. Mine are perfectly reasonable, hence the lack of any entertaining story.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 11:14, Reply)

ACHOOOOOOO!
Sorry, im allergic to bullshit
( Bamboo Steamer, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 11:11, Reply)

philosophical
My dad is a philosophy lecturer, and as I was growing up he encouraged me to always argue my case. If I could provide a good argument, he'd let me do whatever I wanted.

Me: Can I stay out all night at the party on Saturday?
Dad: Why do you want to do that?
Me: Because it will help me to integrate with my peers.
Dad: There'll be drink and drugs there. That's bad.
Me: Er ... But alcohol and tobacco are harmful drugs and they are legal. Isn't that just hypocrisy? You hate hypocrisy.
Dad: There's the matter of the law. You are underage for drinking.
Me True, but ... age is as much a matter of personal maturity as numerical calculation. The law doesn't consider this. I can handle it.
Dad: OK, so why do you have to stay all night?
Me: Because the girls won't be drunk enough to sleep with me until about 11.00, and then I'm going to need a couple of hours to do the job properly. Then it'll be too late for public transport and I don't want to wake you up ...
Dad: Hmm. I don't want any teenage pregnancies.
Me: Which is why I have this pack of condoms.
Dad: ...........
Me: Dad?
Dad: ..... OK, son. Go and get yourself laid.
Me: Cheers, dad!
(Fothermucker, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 11:03, Reply)

I'll never forget the trouble I got into from my Dad
when I referred to playing the bone-a-phone as 'masturbation'.

It wasn't easy, growing up the child of the editors of Viz.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 10:31, Reply)

Still not sure why really, but....
...Back in the mid nineties, one of my friends wasn't allowed to go to the local "Laser Quest" / "Quaser" centre as was the then fad, because his parents (whom were a fair bit older than the average) firmly believed that "lasers are the weapons of the future and they didn't want their son being trained to fight in future wars" So being a good bunch of lads, we went without him!... haven't seen him in years..... oddly
(apatao, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 10:10, Reply)

Not that strict at all...
My parents have never been strict really, I had a set time for going to bed when I was little but that stopped at GCSE level and now they just started saying if you end up tired tomorrow thats your own fault. Not been banned from anything else, even when I managed to rack up £80 worth of dial-up porn when I was about 17 all I got was "If you do it again you'll have to pay for it". Oh, and I'm not allowd to smoke, ever, or my mum will break my legs. I really believe she will too.
(OzEden is probably clinically insane, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 9:33, Reply)

WHERE I CAN SEE YOU
up till the age of about ten, I was only aloud to play at the park directly over the road from my house. Because it could be seen from the kitchen window.

At least it meant unstablemum had no problems with me crossing the road.

She simply shouted through the window when she thought it was safe to cross.

Unfortunately, she could only really see one way due to a large bush on the corner of the street, so she nearly got me thraped by a bloody big number 892 bus once!

I was 8.
(UnstableDan Bah, Humbug! ooooh, humbugs, nyom!, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 9:25, Reply)

improvement
My mother - bless her - decided that I was going to be given all the chances in life that she'd never had - whether I wanted them or not. I was sent to so many different clubs and classes, all of which ended badly. For example:

Horse-riding: I was bought the helmet and the silly trousers and sent to a barn on the outskirts to learn how to ride. I hated horses and they hated me. My ride - Nugget - kicked me and bit my knee and was later put down.

Guitar - I was bought a guitar and sent to have lessons. As no-one had ever taught me how to read music, I just strummed the guitar very, very quietly while everyone else was playing a tune. I was discovered imediately and forced to do a solo, which proved to be very unimpressive indeed.

Piano - One lesson. Being a fantasist, my mother assured the teacher that I was highyl proficient. In fact, I had never seen a real piano before and still couldn't read music. After a matter of seconds the piano teacher discerned that I had a cloth ear and sausage fingers, and sent me home.

Elocution lessons - Yes, my mother wanted me to lose my Sheffield accent so I could become the next Tony Curtis. Cue several years or reciting Shakespeare and various dud poets to audiences of politely-clapping pensioners. And being systematically victimised at school for being a 'homo'.

Scouts - One day. We went to the woods to learn 'tracking' and I tracked my way straight back home. The other boys were a bunch of upper-class wankers.

All of which instilled in me the impression that I was a failure at everything - an impression which persists to this very day as I sit here with my job (the third in a year) hanging by a thread.

Cheers mum!
(frankspencer, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 9:20, Reply)

Memories of The Main Road...
We weren't allowed near The Main Road. It wasn't named, but we knew where it was, about 3 streets away from our house.

Well! One has to try these things. Aged about 8, I sneaked off and had a look for myself.

I saw a wide street with a couple of pubs and some shops, two or three cars and a bloke with a dog. Didn't look too bad, but felt, you know, dangerous.

These days, that same stretch of road is gridlocked 12 hours a day and all the former shops are takeaways or gimmicky pubs.

Every night it's thronged with students and Polish immigrants getting bladdered. You can buy whatever you want, as long as it's not legal, and if you can hang onto your wallet.

Mother, you were right. It took 40 years, but you were right.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 9:18, Reply)