They never figured out it would have been better to let me wear jeans like the other kids ...
My parents like to think of themselves as middle-class. This means going to every length to cover up their inner-city Birmingham/Paisley accents and upbringing. It also meant buying our clothes from jumble sales as kids (with strict warnings to never tell anyone) so that they could afford to live in a fairly large house in one of the 'posher' estates. Its all about apprearances ...

Its relieving to know we weren't the only kids not allowed to watch ITV, due to it being too common. My Dad used to frown on Channel 4 too, until I finally convinced him to compare the Channel 4 and BBC news in the mid-nineties. Anyway, they had an interesting combination of absurd strictness, and extreme permisiveness, apparently depending on how things would look to the neighbours, and whether it was likely to affect me going to university and getting a good job (I was even warned I would be disowned if I didn't go to uni).

Me and my sister weren't allowed Barbie dolls, as they were 'far too tacky'. No, we had to play with Cindy dolls and Sylvanian families, which obviously weren't tacky at all. My mum used to get my primary school teachers to give me homework to do, at a time when no other children ever had to do homework. Then she would make me stay in during the holidays to do it, while the other kids played out on the street - something I was never allowed to do, for fear of annoying the neighbours.

At Secondary school, I was the only kid in my class forced to wear the 'recomended dress' of black trousers, white shirt, and black sweatshirt - whilst all the other kids wore jeans and trainers. Woo. What it took them over 2 years to figure out, is that I'd buy really sheap sluttly clothes at the weekend with my pocket money, and get changed after they went to work in the morning, and then back into the 'recomended dress' before they got home from work. So from the ages of 12-15 I'd generally turn up to school in mini-skirts, 3 1/2 inch platform heels, and tight, low-cut tops. I went from being a social outcast, to the one who every one knew and gossiped about, I don't think that was quite what they were hoping for when they decided I should be 'different'. Eventually they figured out that my school clothes were always miraculously clean. I wasn't allowed to pierce my ears until I was 16 because it's 'too tacky'. Two weeks later, my mum decided it looked good and had hers done too.

At the same time, I was always encouraged to try alcohol (drinking wine with dinner is cultured you know) and I used to go to the pub from the age of 13 with my parents' blessing - as long as it was with the right friends. They even bought me nice bottles of wine to take to parties when I was 15 (instead of drinking something cheap and tacky) and would give me a lift into town to go clubbing, to save me getting the bus. They'd let me go off to my bedroom for hours with boyfriends (surely they knew we were having sex??) but if I got anything less than an A in school, then there would be all hell to pay.

To be fair, despite the sex and underage drinking, I was a perfect child - no smoking, drugs or antisocial behaviour - but I always insisted on doing it my own way, which would lead to MASSIVE rows. My mum actually stopped speaking me for almost a year when I decided to take a gap year and move to London with my then boyfriend.

Having said all that, one friend's foster parents made her join a cult and stole all her money, another's Dad used to beat her, and my mate's dad used to anally rape him as a kid, so I can't really complain.
(cherrynicola, Fri 9 Mar 2007, 22:03, Reply)