mum's always right
my mum:

wouldn't let me watch telly before 4 on a weekday, wouldn't buy me a shellsuit when all my mates had them, wouldn't let me watch an 18 cert film until I was 15, made me tidy my room before I got my pocket money...

...and she was totally right about all of it. I love my mum :) oh, except that her and dad used to give me beer with dinner from age 14 ish and now I find it weird eating without something alcoholic to go with it....meh.
( yes yes yes man oi mate, someone's writtten 'bum' on your neck, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 12:20, Reply)

Not me, the Mrs...
Apparently, Mrs God's stepfather told her "Don't bring any niggers in this house!". Of course, she didn't tell me this until *after* the 'meet the folks' moment. I'm the only person she's ever brought home :) . Of course, he didn't say a word to me. He just sat there, stared at the TV, and smoked cigs. Turns out this isn't because I'm a nigger. It's because he's a total and utter c---.

Length? Oh yes, spent literally minutes downloading donkey porn on his new laptop. That'll teach him to text Mrs God asking her to tell me to fix it for him.
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 12:14, Reply)

Er, there was a few things...
My parents were quite reasonable and easygoing types. Their reaction to me being found drunk in pool of vomit? "Your hangover will be a suitable punishment". Me getting home late? "Ah, there you are. What happened?" Me getting expelled from school? "Damn, now we have to send you to that other school over there."

But there were a few things that marred their usual composure...

Let's start with my Dad, as he was always the really laid-back one, calm and reasonable in all things. Well, except when I said I wanted my ear pierced. You'd have thought WW3 had started. Given that at 16 I was taller than my Dad, you'd have thought it would be OK, but no - he almost literally scared the poo out of me. Now, twenty years later, I've rebelled to the point of a pierced... er, navel. Oh well. Interestingly, when he saw my tattoo, his only comment was 'At least you didn't get your ear pierced'. Still can't figure that one out.

The other one my Dad managed was that I wasn't supposed to wear a black shirt. Black t-shirts were *grudgingly* allowed (hey, I was a CS student) but no black shirts. Apparently it was the uniform of Fascists or something. Thanks to Mrs God I now own two black shirts, neither of which have ever been on my body... I just can't do it. Oh, the shame.

My Mom, on the other hand, was the moral one. I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn't have a girlfriend stay overnight. At all. No way. Nohow. This despite the fact that my brother's girlfriend was basically living with him in our house. She'd go home a couple of times a month when her mother stopped forwarding her post. Apparently the reason was because my brother was in a stable relationship and I wasn't. Er, right. But he's younger than me. Apparently for me, stable relationship == someone i'm married to. For *him* (her favourite, to be fair), stable relationship == fed teh cock more than twice.

I even got a vaguely disapproving glare when Mrs. God turned up with me the last time she stayed. Sorted that one quite quickly - told little Demigod to go distract her if he wanted to keep his Playstation. That worked :)
(purplegod counting down for Christmas!, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 12:11, Reply)

in defense of parents everywhere....
speaking as a parent i've come to realise that there is no hand book, only a broad set of guidelines - (the main one being, make sure your offspring don't actually die) so..

basically we're winging it. making it up as we go.

if something seems weird or overly strict in years to come, it's because we didn't actually think it through or said it in the heat of the moment. that moment being 'i would like a quiet moment, please don't mess it up.' in extreme cases, when faced with a problem we realy can't figure out the correct rule for, we apply something that happened to us when we were kids. good or bad.
(localhost, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 12:05, Reply)

Mute music
Mrs Brocky spent a bit of time at her Nan & Grandad's house when she was younger.

She was not allowed to watch Top of the Pops, but after protesting, her Grandad finally relented.

She was then allowed to watch it as long as the sound was turned all the way down
(brocky, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 11:37, Reply)

Not Mum
Not really banned, quite the opposite. I was encouraged to do many things i dont want to do. My mother however, wasnt a big part of this.

My dad had played football (soccer) all his life and was really good. however, after him forcing me to play for a few teams i decided it was not my thing. so then i was forced to choose another sport. picking rugby i found out i was really quite good. played for school, town and county at full back. still i didnt like it, but i perservered as not to disapoint my dad.

when my mum and dad split up (i was 14), i played for a few more years and then retired. aged 16. probably the earliest retirement from sport ever.

my dad used to say that sport kept you healthy and stopped me getting fat. im now 18 and really quite skinny, and the time i used not running around like a loon i spend getting grades n musical instuments (3 grade 5s to date) which helped me no end gettin into uni.

Just goes to show, do things you want to do, and unis let you in because of it. (turns out i need 20 UCAS points at A level)
(Evenflow, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:56, Reply)

nobodies fool
Its Unstablemum again folks.

On a school night, she wouldnt let me do anything or go anywhere.

Except homework.

So, I devised a cunning plan with my bezzie m8 (sic) and started going to his house up the road to 'do my homework'.

Yeah, I'd done it all on the bus home.

Get changed at his, be in the local 'we dont i.d anyone ever' pub by half six, get home by half ten.

effing steaming everytime.
It was obvious where I'd been.
She never said anything, as my homework was always done, and I never got into trouble, and had a healthy respect for my alcohol tolerence levels and was in at a decent time.
So she cant have done too bad a job really.

She raised 3 of us on her own and we had her alzhiemers ridden mum living with us too.

Great lady, taken before her time.
(UnstableDan Bah, Humbug! ooooh, humbugs, nyom!, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:53, Reply)

daddy driving half naked
at the age of 16 a friend whose parents where going on a holyday cruise invited me at his house to spend new year's eve with him and a bunch of schoolmates..

my parents were not too happy about it 'cause they had strong family values and thought i should spend it with them..i insisted so much that my dad said:" ok but i'll come and pick you up at 1am..(better than nothing i thought)

he dropped me 'round dinner time..not that we ate anything that night, but we made sure we tried every single bottle of alcohol in the house, even the small "souvenirs from the alpes" bottles (those that come by six of different lethal flavors..). most of us ended up puking everywhere in the house..even in the "rare tropical fishes aquarium"..

but time passed very fast and my dad was waiting outside in his car..i tried to act sober but i couldn't stop laughing when i noticed he was only wearing a dressing gown..and sleepers (it was just a 5 mns drive and he didn't feel like dressing up again in the middle of the night)..

on the way home we got stopped by the cops who were doing random alcohol tests to drivers..they also laughed very hard when they asked dad to get out the car, as he didn't have his driver's license with him..they laughed a little less when the alcohol testing balloon turned red.
( olivier8 (euroloon), Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:33, Reply)

My mum
Wouldn't let me go out with the other kids at the age of fifteen/sixteen to the bridge because she knew I'd be getting drunk, smoking and getting off with girls. For similar reasons, I was never allowed to go to parties and such.

A result of this was that I never really made social contact with most of the girls in my year and was generally quite shy. This (coupled with a few other formative disasters which had nothing to do with her) meant that I never had any girlfriends at school.

One day, my mother comes up to her socially crippled son and says "I've noticed you haven't had any girlfriends. Is there anything you want to tell me? I'll still love you if you're gay, you know."

...

I had no words.

Another time, at the age of seventeen, she threatened to call the police because she found out that my best mate and me were planning to go to the pub for a couple. She then had a bit of a paddy when she found out that my best mate's mum, a good friend of hers, couldn't really see what the problem was. Exclamations of "why do I feel like the world is against me?" and things of that nature.

She's actually a really good mum, but she did have one or two funny ideas. Still I guess the lessons were learnt, my younger brother had a much freer rein as a result. I'd like to think it was because I was a trailblazer and fought for our collective rights to underage drink, smoke, fight and shag, but I suspect it was more because she couldn't be arsed going through the arguments a second time.

Girls did eventually find out about the length, you'll be glad to know.
( Kroney, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:26, Reply)

Mushrooms
No, not the psycho-active magic variety, just the regular buy-them-from-Tesco edible type. My mum doesn't like mushrooms, therefore we kids didn't get any. Not so much a ban per se, just total mushroom deprivation. It was only when I went to University that I discovered what I'd been missing. Now I love the squidgy little fu...ngi.

I discovered other stuff at University too, but that's a story for another day.

Other than that, I wasn't really prohibited from doing much. But being a boringly well behaved wee kid, I didn't want to do stuff that my parents wouldn't have approved of anyway.

Length? Find out by personal appointment only.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:23, Reply)

mums...meh
My mum turned ultra strict whe she went through the 'change', and as I was still living at home it was me that bore the brunt of her tattered emotions and foibles.

One of which was going absolutely bongo if I left soap suds in the kitchen sink after washing the pots - she actually demonstrated to me how to wash them away and said I was 'authorised' to leave a certain amount around the plug (about a cup-full).

She also forbid me from switching my lava lamp* on as she said it was a fire hazaard. But when I left home she used to have it switch on all the time - the cow.



*I was an art college crusty - we all had them OK!
(cherry B, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:15, Reply)

Parents' priorities, eh?
The only thing my dad ever forbade was 2000AD. I left a copy in the bog one day and he read Judge Dredd (Violence! Fascism! 9-year-old daughter!). Curses. Had to wait till I was back with my mum again.

The only thing my mum ever forbade was going into the Scientology shop on Tottenham Court Road. Well, that and getting a motorbike. Still never done either come to think of it. Hm.

Sorry dad, mum wins!
(littlesunshine licked your blinky diodes on, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:15, Reply)

My parents
are hideously liberal. They used to encourage me to smoke illicit substances (thank God, not before school, though only because it was too early), so I don't think I was banned from doing anything, really.

My grandmother, however, once hit my dad for playing "bill and ben" with his mate from down the road. She thought they were taking the piss out of some spastic kid.
(SwampDonkey, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:08, Reply)

My Mum's a looper
Whilst at primary school, I was never allowed to go on a school trip which would involve water.

I had to make the "long" walk to school, filled with feelings of dread and embarrasment, with the letter from mum, stating that I could not go on a boat trip as "Young moondust would jump over the side and drown"

Then the following year there was a trip to the local hydro-electric dam. Obviously, my fictious and apparantly fatal facination for leaping into water was brought to the fore and yet again I had to suffer the jibes from my school mates, but this time the teacher read out the letter from my mum aloud to the class.

Mum denies she ever said any thing of the sort.
(moondust, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:05, Reply)

Oh shit . . .
let's not go here . . .

My folks are first generation Greek, in a foreign country. They have two children (myself and a brother), and I'm the eldest, and also the only girl on my father's side of the family.

Far too many stupid prohibitions to mention here, but here are some highlights:
1. not being allowed to walk home after school alone (I was thirteen), because "someone might abduct me."
2. Being cautioned on not letting anyone "take my knickers down," else they could do bad things to me(again, advice to a 13 year old)
3. Not being allowed to see a movie at 14 - Dad and my brother came along too (it was "Who Killed Roger Rabbit" btw).
4. no visiting friends at home
5. no boyfriends - I decided to ignore that one at 17, and no one spoke to me for a week.
6. No going out with mixed groups - "might be boys there." If by chance, I was allowed to say, catch a movie (erm, I was about 16 at the time), I had to promise "I'd marry a Greek."

Oops - slight problem there . . . :)

7. No nightclubbing at 18 (waited until I was 19) - my father thought those places were "seedy." Actually he might be right.
8. No boyfriends brought home - by Uni, they'd realised I wasn't going to be the Good Greek Girl who only dated the one man, married said man, and brought him home for a Big Fat Greek Wedding, but, they didn't want to know about it until "the one."
9. No sex - "good girls don't do that sort of thing." I suspect my Mum may not have done that sort of thing much since we were born either . . .

The rules have relaxed somewhat lately: my folks have become increasingly paranoid about my singledom at 31, and now are happy for me to *shock* bring boys home.

Wait 'til they meet Legless . . . :)
( Mrs Legless . . . belongs to, well, you know . . . :), Fri 9 Mar 2007, 10:02, Reply)

Meanwhile
as I entered late adolescence (back in the days when 'late adolescence' meant exactly that, and not between the ages of 25 and 49 as it does now), my mum told us that we were quite entitled to go down the pub and have a few beers, but if we were to come home drunk we would have to sleep on the doorstep.

My brother had a mate (let's call him Esmond) who mum was very fond of. One night they went off to the pub and, sure enough, came home steaming drunk. Not only that, they had been in a fight.

Rather than make them sleep on the doorstep (and bleed to death), mum rushed to the door with an 'Oh God what's happened?', brought them in, dressed Esmond's wounds and basically made a real fuss of him.

I don't think we ever came home sober after that.
(><(((">, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:50, Reply)

There was a kid at school
whose mother didn't allow him to watch Doctor Who.

He was 13.
(><(((">, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:40, Reply)

Pokémon
My friend's parents wouldn't let him watch Pokémon because it was "too violent". He was 12 at the time.
(alwyn Professional Whittler since:, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:40, Reply)

hypocrites
When I was 12 I wasn’t allowed to smoke drink or have sex

But now I’m 21 they positively encourage it!

Fooking hypocrites!
(kintore_homeboy tenuous links since 1986!, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:39, Reply)

liar
Among her other interesting traits, my mother is a pathological liar and a fantasist who spends most of her life in her own world. Once, when returning a Rick Astley CD to a street trader because "it didn't sound like him" she tried to bolster her argument by pretending she was Astley's mum. The trader pissed himself laughing at her. But that's not the story.

The story is that I had a thing for playing the drums with anything remotely drumstick-like: knives, forks, bamboo canes, whatever. Once, I found some chopsticks in the cutlery draw and drummed with such ferocity that I broke them. So I just threw them away.

When mother dear discovered the shattered sticks, she went ballistic and told me that the chopsticks were antique, made of ivory and handed down through generations. She stormed upstairs and gathered my most prized possessions together: my stereo, my Samantha Fox poster, my Star Wars figures. And she said she'd burn them all unless I could replace the chopsticks.

Me: Why did you have antique chopsticks in the cutlery draw?
Mum: Never mind.
Me: Where am I going to buy antique chopsticks that have been in your family for generations?
Mum: I don't care.
Me: Your family are Irish - they lived in Sheffield since they were kids ...
Mum: Somebody went to China ... and they bought these chopsticks.
Me: Why didn't they just take a fork?
Mum: I'm going to get some matches ...

So I went to a friend's house and bitched about my psycho mother, telling him the story of the 'priceless' chopsticks. He said, "We've got loads of chopsticks - why not take some of ours?" And, lo!, his chopsticks were exactly the same as my mother's - £2 for about 50 of them from a charity shop. Made of plastic. I offered to give him Boba Fett for 10 of them.

Cue me going home and presenting not one pair but 5 to my mother.

Mum: Where did you get these?
Me: My friend's family also has a Chinese connection - it's called Oxfam

I got all my stuff back. The lying bitch.
(frankspencer, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:37, Reply)

History Homework
Not parents but my grandad.

He was an Italian fella who was usually quite meek and mild by nature. I used to have to go round to his place to do my homework as mum and dad worked late and somebody had to keep an eye on me or I'd be out playing football and trying to catch squirrels.

Spread my books out on the big dining room table and reluctantly made a start.

Grandad saunters over, sees what I'm working on and throws an absolute fit. "You are not going to write lies about the great man under my roof! Put those books away IMMEDIATELY!!!"

I had to go in to school the next day and explain I hadn't written my essay about the life and times of Benito Mussolini because my grandad wouldn't let me.

Fascist dictator, yes, but he replaced all the wooden manhole covers in my grandads village with metal ones.

Apparently this made up for all the bad stuff.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:30, Reply)

the use of embarassment as a learning tool
Because I was an only child my parents were ridiculously over protective. They laid down very specific guidelines and the punishment for breaking the guidelines was to add more guidelines to the list.

So no smoking, no drinking, no swearing, no sex, where are you going, who are you going with, how are you travelling, what time will you be back, no thats too late, you must be back by this time, as long as you live in my house you follow my rules ad nauseum.

My parents were much smarter than this though. They would suggest a compromise i.e "you can go to this persons party, but only if you introduce me to them when i drop you off and i will be back at 10:00 to pick you up". I was 16. Rather than endure the embarassment of introducing some drunken teenager hosting a party to my parents and then enduring the embarassment of my dad picking me up just as the party started getting good, I'd rather not go at all. At the time i thought they were being unfair, no other parents i knew of were this up tight. In hind sight i can now see they were just setting them selves up. By humiliating me, i never asked to go to any parties/ events again and they didnt have to be mean parents in the future.
(spent.fish flipping and gasping, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:25, Reply)

Dads know best...
I was a tense and neurotic child.

I wouldn’t describe Mr. Father as strict. No. I own both a dictionary and a thesaurus. Perverse, sadistic and irrational are far more apt terms for the lengths Mr. Father would take to stifle my pint-sized pursuit of happiness.

He told me that I should never pick my nose or put my fingers in my mouth. Not for reasons of good manners or hygiene, but because it would inevitably lead to irreversible ‘spastic hands’. Apparently a former colleague of Mr. Father used to bite his nails, developed said condition and was promptly relieved of his duties. He ended up living under the flyover eating old chips out of the gutter on account of his stricken digits.

A similar fate awaited me and my feet if I continued to wear socks in bed. Mr. Father helpfully explained that such unnecessary attire would most definitely cause my toes to fuse together, thus leaving me with amorphous lumps of meat hanging from the ends of my legs.

Mr. Father said that eating white bread and biscuits would render me incapable of opening my bowel and that he would then have to send me to ‘a doctor’ who would open it for me. Conversely, consuming too much fruit or even a solitary peanut would leave me unable to hold anything in.

Hence I waddled through my formative years with a colon packed so tightly with super-dense faecal matter that my waistline became comparable to an event-horizon. Merely unbuckling my belt could suck the light from a room and gassy emissions had been known to draw planets out of orbit. To this day I have a grossly oversized large intestine which ripples like a steroid-chomping strongman’s arm.

Other memorable parenting tactics were to advise me to go to sleep as quickly as possible because a child falling asleep after midnight would often never wake up. Also I had to be quiet, as failing to hear one’s own heartbeat would likely cause it to stop.

A few years ago I reminded Mr. Father of these pearls of wisdom so kindly entrusted to me.

Oh, how he laughed...
(akzidenz grotesk, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 9:23, Reply)

NJ
If you are 27 it was 1992 when you were 12.
(Set your faces to Stunned Bigly, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 8:55, Reply)

lan
I feel like a geek for knowing what she meant but nevermind.

back on topic. My parents are awesome, my dad will pick me up after a night out and has been known to come out at 3am to pick me up. Legend.
(lei, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 8:32, Reply)

LAN's
I think she means "go to an event where people sit at computers connected via a LAN and play games like CounterStrike against each other".

CounterStrike is a technology that allows the handicapped to experience playing tag.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 8:13, Reply)

what is a lan?
I believe its a "local area network"

but how you go to one baffles me!
(never-right -getting it wrong since '78, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 8:09, Reply)

Violence
My dad was an electrical engineer and my mum a house- wife until I was ten when my dad got laid off and trained to become a social worker and my mum had just recently qualified to be a teacher. My mums Guardian reading pinko liberal nonsense started to take on new heights. ( my three older brothers had escaped with a reasonable sanity) She used to get violent and go off the wall, tell me heavy/thrash metal and horror films were misogynistic, aggresive and a waste of time. We'd had toy guns banned when I was about 5 years old, no action men, no boxing on tv, Charlton Heston films( he's NRA you know) no morning tv, daytime tv, Professionals or Sweeny. Fuckin' news, Panorama, World in Action (that I sometimes thought was fuckin' top)and ponsy fuckin' plays on Channel 4. She threatened to burn all my records once and I told her I'd burn down their house. Funnily enough she didn't. Plus as my brothers went to Uni and I didn't ( I failed my o levels - all bar one because by now I didn't give a flying fuck- and glad I didn't- was having a wicked time out and about pushing body and mind to the limits) So I'd get the " What are you going to do"? at home and at school, to which I replied " I dunno." " Is that all you can say, dunno"? " Dunno."- used to wind the fuckers up no end. For all her feminist, fuckwitted preaching about how wonderful PC liberalism is she sure knew, like the rest of them (her fuckwit friends) how to censor and suppress freedom of expression like a fascist.
I still love horror films, thrash metal and have long added martial arts but have chilled out a bit with trance,ambient and a variety of film genres.
I can now deal with my parents two days at a time and get on well with them but by the third day it's time to leave as there's been a barny between me and the old dear, bless her. And I'm a teacher. There's irony for ya.
The moral of this story is don't educate potential feminists.

Rant finished
(Dellamorte Dellamore Fuck it all, fuck it up, fuck it., Fri 9 Mar 2007, 7:56, Reply)

Am I the only one wondering what the hell a lan is?
Anyways, my parents are lovely souls, but when we were growing up my mum especially decided that most things in the modern world were probably really bad for you ("there's no real evidence for it, but it's SCIENTIFIC FACT" etc...) and banned us from doing all manner of weird and wonderful things. These included; watching TV (we didn't have one, but my gran lived just down the road so we just went and watched it there), eating meat (because of the pesticides etc, not the poor fluffy animals. This wasn't really an issue though, I didn't like meat much anyway), eating sweets (mmm lets have some lovely nuts and raisins. This one was more offensive) and drinking any milk, at all. This meant we had to have orange juice on our cereal. If any of the other things didn't make us weird kids, that one did.

Anyway, it all backfired, as now me and my syblings are all massively addicted to tv, meat, sweets, fags, booze etc etc in one way or another.

Best of all I now get to wake up every morning to a nice milky bowl of cereal. Joy!
( Damien's Hearse, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 7:43, Reply)

Most things, my parents are fine...
however, whenever i mention the words "i", "want", "to", "go", "to", "a", "lan", in a sentence in that order, i get the hugest talk of my life. you see, i only go to the moderated, very large lans where there are more then 60 people or so, so firstly, they aren't that often.
secondly, there are boys there. god forbid that i would actually go to a place where there are boys.
and because there are majority guys there (ie, out of 60 there will be 54 guys and 6 girls) my parents instantly think i'm going to either become a molestered girl or a total slut. considering the fact that i can barely string a sentence together in front of someone i don't know, but can kick a guy so hard i can make them cry, it is highly unlikely that anything bad will happen, but of course, me being a "vulnerable 15 yr old girl" i have to be watche 24/7.

oh and i'm not allowed to catch a bus on the weekends by myself. its too dangerous apparently.

and i'm not allowed to stay home at night by myself either, even though we live out woop woop and i know how to fire a gun and where the gun is kept. lol. stupid parents.

oh well.
i'm happy being a loner in my room anyways. fuck my parents. i survive without them
(Poppet some assembly required., Fri 9 Mar 2007, 6:27, Reply)