The Good Old Days

I had an appointment with my therapist this morning. But rather than deal with what was actually on my mind, (everybody hates me) I decided to take a break. Occasionally you need to relax a little and manipulate your 50 minutes towards an easy session. One where you leave content and lying to yourself about the masterful job you’re doing with your life.

So I walked into her office armed with a golden oldie of mine that I know I can complain about for the full 50 minutes and finish feeling really self-righteous. It’s called, “My Parents Didn’t Know What The Hell They Were Doing.” I sat down and warmed up with the “Father Was Never Home,” diatribe, segued artfully into the “They-Never-Told-Me-Anything-About-Sex” lament and was sliding comfortably into my rant on how no one ever helped me with my homework, how I was forced to babysit my younger siblings, never got a car, couldn’t leave the house and had to fold the entire family’s laundry when suddenly, it hit me.

My parents were geniuses.

Oh my God. There’s no denying it. They knew exactly what they were doing and in retrospect, it was brilliant. They had the upper hand, and they used it. When they said no, it was no. If you demanded an explanation, they laughed. Why should they explain? They were the parents, we were just teenagers.

I mean what would you give for even a week of raising your kids the way your parents did? Let’s consider the possibilities:

-You could hit them.

-No seat belts. If they argued with you in the car, you could tap the brakes and throw them into the dashboard to emphasize your point.

-Parenting wasn’t an industry. You just did it. If the kid got fucked up, people felt sorry for the parents.

-You could feed them crap. Even frozen crap. Two thirds of the food pyramid was crap.

-Bad moods were just “phases.” Not signs you should have seen coming long before they hacked into the County Records and officially declared you dead. (Real funny, Danny.)

-”Friends with benefits,” meant sucking up to an unpopular kid who had a pool.

-You didn’t have to confiscate 7 goddamned devices to keep them from communicating with each other.

-You could say, “Wait ’til your father gets home.” Not, “Wait ’til your father who’s living with my ex-best friend and raising her kids by her second husband gets home.”

-And if he didn’t come home, you could hit them.

Rae.