h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My parents are a-holes.

I knew it in high school, and I know it now. They are the biggest a-holes I have ever had the misfortune to associate with.

I hate family. If blood didn't tie us together for life, I wouldn't even give any of them the time of day.

O_o

Well, it's true.

Anything in particular, or just an accumulation of things?

sweetie, just remember that you make your own family.

Come the 14th or so of July, I'll be child and ex free for a couple of weeks. Why don't you come down and we'll go do something silly? Like spend the evening wandering around the mecca that is the spectrum laughing at the goth boys.

They could very well be a-holes, but remember that they were doing the best that they were capable of. Granted, that might not have been worth much, but it's all you can ask of anybody - the best they are capable of. They're humans and maybe they aren't so good at parenting, but at least they stuck to it and tried. They provided you with food and shelter and love. Think how it must have been for them - not being particularly good at something but needing to do it anyway and with the most important thing in the world at stake. It may look easy from the outside, but let me tell you, parenting is no picnic.

I second that. It's the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

Oh, and despite their faults, they seem to have turned out a reasonably decent product in you, sea.

true enough. sea is very cool.

I just hope D turns out well. Some days are better than others.

As a parent and an a-hole (now and then) I'd just like to point out that I voted to have them all taken away at 11 and brought back with a law degree at 25.

> They could very well be a-holes, but remember that they were doing
> the best that they were capable of.

I often hear people say this, generalizing about all parents.

And I'm sorry, but it's just not true. Yes, many parents truly have done the best they could. But would you have me believe that abusive parents just aren't *capable* of not abusing their children, that they had no choice in the matter? I'm sorry, that's a crock of s**t.

There are parents out there who have the mental/physical/spiritual resources to do a better job, but make the choice to plow those resources into other priorities -- be it work, drugs, whatever.

After all, it's not like you need to take a test to be parents. "They're doing the best they can!" is tantamount to saying, "No, really, we can trust the LAPD!"

No offense intended, Sea! :D

Allright. Yes, they provide me with health insurance, a car, car insurance, emergency money, a roof over my head when I can't manage to get an apartment...

But do they give me credit for all the things *I* do for *them*? For not doing drugs? For getting good grades? For going to college? For not being a screw-up like several of my cousins? Heck no. All I hear is "You don't do enough around here. We give you all of this and you can't be bothered to drop everything to chauffeur your sister around whenever we can't be bothered."

I am SO SICK AND TIRED of them trying to make me feel like I'm a burden to them. They have no right. If they don't want to support me, then DON'T! But don't let me get this far and then jerk the carpet out from under me. That's just cruel.

I've given them everything they asked for. Mom said don't smoke, I didn't. Mom said don't drink, I didn't. Mom said don't get pregnant, I didn't. Mom said get good grades, I got them. So where's my ing kudos?!

How am I supposed to be an adult when they treat me like a child? How is my sister supposed to act like an adult when they do the same thing to her? How can they expect her to follow their rules when they keep changing them?

"You need to get a job. You need to pay rent. You need to be responsible. -- Oh, here, honey, let me give you a ride to work. Oh, need a ride home? Okay, I'll make your sister pick you up. -- What? You need a ride? Why do you think you're entitled to a ride? You're an adult. Find your own ride. Sea, go pick up your sister."

I just hate it when they take a stance and then change it. I know that not everything in life is black or white, but they seem to think it's all the color of mud.

And I am the first to admit that the LAPD is not to be trusted.

Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong generation - the one before me got cheaper education and a better job market, the one after mine reacted by going completely out of control, leaving me wondering why I'm sitting here in passive cynicism and not drinking myself silly or burning cop cars...

Crime's lowest in the city since we started recording crime figures, yet permatemps from New Delhi are still taking the backbone out of Silicon Alley while vocational high schools are being shut down by our ever-so slightly out of touch mayor, who's giving out property tax rebates while our cops are marching over poor wages... the bubble's burst and yet it hasn't. Took me five months to string together two part-time jobs in my wait for the new school semester, and I'm better educated than most. =/

- NYC waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Hey, Sea -- I won't start a rant here about my parents (b'sides, NYC, for one, has already heard pleeeenty ) nor about my job (bah, I can be content with Wal-Mart for a while; life without job is worse than life with crummy job). I certainly sympathize, since it seems the only way I'm ever going to get the chance to really "grow up" is to take rash action and get the heck out of here -- that is, as soon as I pay off the loans from my ill-fated excursion with college life. Which has put my parents in a strange self-contradicting loop of "I told you so" (regarding the college failure) and "If you would've just worked to your POTENTIAL, you'd've done just fine!" Gahhh! The illogic is brain-frying.

Um... okay, I _did_ say I wasn't going to rant... and I think I forgot the point of this post... sooooo... *tiptoes off quietly*