Things my mother would never let me get away with

[highlyeccentric]

You know, my parents aren't so bad these days. I got home past midnight a few times over the break, and being all concientious and all after a year in the wild world of Sydney, I stuck my head into their room to let them know I was home alive and in one peice.
They didn't hear me come into the house; they didn't hear me come in their bedroom door; they didn't even hear me saying 'I'm home... hello, i'm home...'
So I figure they're not all that worried about me. Which is a bit unnerving. Two years ago I was annoyed by their foolish habit of sleeping light until I came home; these days I know I have to check in when I get home, thanks to the guardianship of Kate. And now my parents are snoring through it all!

Used to be they worried, though. Wouldn't let me go to parties unless they knew Will was going to be there. And that was only last year.

Now, not so long ago I got to thinking about how my parents met. And it occurred to me that if my mother were her own grandmother, she would never have let her innocent charge carry on like that.

My mother, she didn't like boys with long hair. My father, he was a boy with long hair. Mum maintains that she never spoke to him, but dad says he recalls two full conversations over the course of their mutual schooling. I gather he'd kept count.
Dad left school at the end of year eleven, and took himself off to a job in the bank. This entailed cutting his hair and getting a suit.

Mum, meanwhile, was in the year below him, and her Home Ec class had the duty of preparing and catering for the Year 12 Farewell. They were also allowed to attend. Mum had been invited by a certain young man, who'd taken her out in his car a few times, but who she now swears she didn't like all that much. By my calculations she would've been sixteen at the time. At any rate, she told this young lad she wasn't going to the dance, because she had no dress.
Come the day of the Farewell, however, her friend Kim has had a delivery of dresses from a cousin working in fashion retail. A few of the dresses didn't fit Kim, but there happened to be one red one which fitted Mum. So off she went, Kim's Mum June driving them both there and coming to pick them up.

Now, I know June. A most responsible woman, and I was betting on her being rather protective too (I believe she only decided to tell her eldest daughter about the birds and the bees on the eve of said daughtere's wedding). But for some reason, when young Diane waltzed up to June and announced that Robbie- now short-haired and eligible for her attention- was driving her home, did June bat an eyelid?
Apparently not.
Did Nan and Da have a fit when she arrived in a fancy car driven by a strange young man? (said car belonged to his father, his own rattletrap having been recently written off).
No, they did not.And did young Diane think even once of the possibility of them caring about such things? Let alone the feelings of poor Mr Unnatractive whom she had rejected? Most certainly not.
Now I, at the ripe age of 18, know very well that such behavior is Not On- although i'd probably get in less trouble from my mother at home than from kate at college, but that's not the point!

Comments

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes! Parents!

By all accounts, my parents (paragons of virtue) were quite adept at playing the field. My Dad once managed to take three girls out in the same evening!! (one for early dinner, one for late dinner, one for a night club). My *Mum* (and if you knew her, you'd understand my shock) once had four boys on the go at once!! She got busted though, when they all turned up at the same time to pick her up from a protest march :P (two of them were apparently still interested after this. Fules!! :P)

I don't know. The morality of the older generation lacks a little something, dontyerthink?

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

i don't think either of my parents are capable of being immoral, nor, by all evidence, were they. Just outrageously inconsiderate, apparently.

and *giggles* at your parents....

[flamearrows.livejournal.com]

Mum kept an engagement ring from a boyfriend that was not to be anything more.

It's really quite nice. Certainly fabulously expensive.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

*grins* your mother is fantastic.