Strict parents? Yep.
I was never allowed to play with friends after school. I'm of an 'ethnic minority' and my parents were worried I'd get attacked by the local racists if I left the house. They were worried if I mixed with the white kids at school, they'd corrupt me. My parents were phenomenally racist.

So I spent my days after school sitting watching childrens tv. Only I wasn't allowed to watch live action scripted shows, so I could only watch cartoons. Byker Grove and Grange Hill were considered too adult and my parents used to change the channel when they came on. In the evenings, I spent just about every night of my teenage years watching foreign language tv with my mother (the alternative was to quietly sit in the kitchen doing nothing). This has left me with a deep-seated hate of my 'motherland', its language, its people, it's music, and especially its TV and movies. So now they call me a coconut (white on the inside...).

I wasn't allowed to go out much even whilst I was at college. I went to uni for a year in 2005, where I spent most of the year in my room since I was so socially backwards. I failed the course and my parents blamed it on my friends at university 'corrupting' me. I didn't even have any.

There's also loads of other stuff, like how they didn't allow me to listen to music, beat me, didn't give me any pocket money (like, at all), blah blah blah. It didn't always seem so terrible at the time but when I hear about the things my friends used to do whilst growing up (playing outdoors in summer, gettin into 'adventures', goin on holiday, having girlfriends), I usually end up fighting back tears.
(Dawgster, Tue 13 Mar 2007, 19:23, Reply)