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What are/were your parents like?

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squawk:
My parents are extreme FOBs who came here from the Philippines in the '70s and they are super fantastic. My mom is a nurse and my dad is a doctor so there are a lot of fun medical-related things 'round the house. Like alcohol pads!
I am the youngest, though, and my oldest sibling is nearing 30 years old, so they are pretty old as well (dad 59 and mom 55). I am worrying that my mom is starting to get a bit senile.

Eris:
My parents are both teachers (though my father is medically retired) and in my early school years I was taught by both of them. Both my brother and I learned from a young age to separate the teachers from the parents, to the degree that I would tell my teacher (my dad) what I did on the weekend with my father. They were both handy in primary school when I had homework to do, but also would make sure I did it. They had taught in the area I grew up in for about 20 years before we moved, so they knew all the teachers around there, so they would have plenty of funny stories about our teachers.

My mother is a little overbearing; we always have to let her know when we are travelling that we got to our destination safely, and ring her to let her know we are on our way home. She claims "mother's rights" when we get annoyed that she doesn't trust us to do things for ourselves, so we just go along with her to cause less fuss. I got my temper from her, and so did my brother, so we know how to deal with each other when we get mad. She and my brother are very similar in terms of personalities, so they argue a lot and I am left to either stop them or hide until they storm off. We are pretty close, though; I would go and talk to her for at least an hour every day after work when I lived at home.

I am a lot like my dad, which is a bit worrying at times. When I was younger he would take me for walks up in the hills near where we lived, rather than my brother, who would prefer to stay at home (like mum). He and I are both good at gardening, and kind of understand how our pets tick a bit better than the other two, I think. I don't really understand how I can see my cat getting annoyed while my mother can't, but that seems to be how it ends up. He is the kind of person who doesn't particularly like to go out a lot, preferring to stay at home, which I can relate to. Some things I think I learned off him, like my penchant for having things be straight (he has an obsessive compulsive personality, so he has a lot of little quirks like that). I do worry that seeing as I am so similar to him, that some of his negative personality traits are going to be cause for concern to me, but I think that because I have noticed them in him I know to avoid certain things. I love him dearly, but he has made some decisions that were not the best, for himself orour family. I don't see him very often, which is kind of a good thing.

Jimmy the Squid:
My mother is an immigrant from Sri Lanka. My grandfather (her father) owned a big tea plantation in Columbo and the family was fairly rich (read: Old Money). A result of this is that my mum never really got over the loss of that privledged life and is essentially an extremely arrogant, narrow-minded and immature person. So immature in fact that she really only married my father to get back at her ex-boyfriend. She got custody of my brother and I after they got divorced (I was about 18 months at that point, my brother tells me that I was a last ditch attempt to save the marriage) and basically tried to systematically train us to hate our father which very almost worked.
She is a very strict Catholic and is also very into the whole guilt thing about it, attempting to coerce her children into doing things for her because she fulfilled her responsibilities as a parent and we should feel terrible about ruining her life. Most recently she has been coming to terms with my Atheism by telling me I am an awful son and that it is very sad that I am going to be burning in Hell while she and all our family will be having a great time in Heaven. She kicked me out when I was 16 and I've tried to keep contact to a minimum since then. We don't get on very well but we've both been putting in an extra effort to be nice to each other. When it comes down to it I don't hate her, I just don't love her as I'm told a son should love his mother. I feel sorry for her because she is a very lonely person as a direct result of her being pretty unbearable.

My father is a little odd. His family came here from Hungary, escaping the Russian invasion (literally running across the border while being shot at by soldiers) and were very strict. He didn't do as well as he would have liked to at school and ended up doing a Business Degree part time while working three jobs and trying to raise his two sons so it was and is very important for my brother and I to do well academically, get good jobs and be successfull. I'm not entirely sure what he does for a living but essentially he is a  Regional Sales Manager at a company that makes and sells the chemicals that go into certain things. At anyrate his job is Rather Boring and he prefers to play golf on the weekends. He is very conservative and has never really agreed with how I or my brother choose to dress but he has always been fair, more or less.
He's very clean, I remember when we were small he used to tell us how to eat our ice cream cones so we didn't drip any on our hands or get any on our faces and his house is indescribably spotless. For all that he is really very warm and loving, always willing to help us out with advice or money or anything. Of all the possible patriarchal figures I could have had in my life he is definitely one of them, and a reasonably good one at that. I moved in with him and his wife when my mum kicked me out and my mental health and wellbeing improved a lot because of it. He can be a little pompous and condescending at times, especially when he's in a bad mood but behind that is a genuine concern for our well-being.

My Stepmum is probably one of the loveliest people I know. For as long as I can remember she has been with my dad and has always treated my brother and myself as her own children. She is just as much of a clean-freak as my dad is and is always bustling about the house dusting this and polishing that and reminding us that there is food in the fridge if we are hungry. She can be a bit strange sometimes, like her belief that cows milk is just as good for children as human milk, but she is kind, caring and generally a good person. As far as I'm concerned she is my mother, whereas my mum is my Actual Mother. Basically if I refer to my parents I am referring to my dad and my stepmum. 

Hat:
Drunk as shit

ruyi:
Didn't we have a thread like this semi-recently? Maybe it wasn't so recent. Ah well.


--- Quote from: squawk on 30 Mar 2008, 23:45 --- My mom is a nurse and my dad is a doctor so there are a lot of fun medical-related things 'round the house. Like alcohol pads!

--- End quote ---

Same here! My mom's a nurse. We get like, everything from the hospital...washcloths, basins, AA batteries, sponges, trash bags, tissues, scalpels, gauze, etc. When I was little she used to give me baths in betadine scrub (number two.)

Anyways...my parents are divorced since I was about 3, and not amicably so. My mom (who I've always lived with) is actually a very sweet, mellow person normally. You know, a cute short Chinese lady. Simply dressed and very frugal. But she has a major incapacity to trust people to the point of warning me that all my male friends are capable of rape, so it's a little difficult to deal with her incredible paranoia. Also various stress-type things gave her a temper sometimes but she's getting over that now.

I have a harder time figuring out my dad because I don't spend as much time with him. He grew up on a farm in the Midwest and now he's an old philosophy professor, so he's long-winded and absent-minded. He can be simultaneously perceptive of human nature and utterly blind to his own behavior. He makes a good friend but he's not really cut out to have a family. Also, he has consistently shit relationships. I joke about getting yellow fever from him, but really, it's ridiculous.

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