Posted bySaw this comic today and almost fell out of my chair:
Seeing this reminded me of my own experiences growing up, where try as I might I just couldn’t faze my parents…
I remember being a 21-year-old party girl in San Francisco, and my dad asking me very straight-forwardly about my recreational substance consumption, and me answering him very honestly. (It was, uh, A LOT at the time.)
My father looked thoughtful for a second and then said, “That’s a pretty heroic dosage of toxins. I hope you’re prioritizing sleep and eating well, too.”
I thought to myself, “…!! Fuck, there’s no way to get a rise outta this guy.” And stopped trying.
I posted this story on the Offbeat Families facebook page, and started getting some amazing comments that I just HAVE to share:
- When I told my mom that I lost my virginity (at 18) she said “well, it’s about time!” that’s when I gave up! 🙂
- All of my friends that it was weird that my mom was the one to help me dye my hair pink and purple at 15!
- My mom would say “is that Metallica dear, i really like that song” not what I wanted to hear when I was cranking metal trying to piss her off when I was 15. God Bless her!
- My mother very bluntly asked me if I liked boys or girls when I was about 19, and when I told her I hadn’t decided, I thought I might just like both, she just nodded and said “Well, no rush to decide. May as well make the best of it while you can!”
HA! I love these stories.
My mom took me to my first concert with I was 13 or 14: Ozzfest.
When I got my first tattoos, people asked what my parents thought. I told them that my mom has more tattoos than me.
My dad has still yet to comment on them at all.
I almost just fell out of my chair over that comic. I use to work with that kid in the comic a few years ago.
Apparently my boyfriend went to school with him… crazy.
my mom bought me my first bottle of pink hair dye when I was twelve.
When I got older and she knew I was at parties, she would call me and say “so are you completely wasted yet?”
gotta love her.
My Dad is awesome. I can talk to him about anything without fear of judgement. When I started dating my now-husband, Dad gave me a sex manual and said “Make sure he knows that it’s best to be a bronze medallionist.”
My recent mama moment:
Talking with my inlaws about my mother trying to find out if my nerdy brother has had sex over his 18th birthday weekend. Nan turns to my 18-month-old daughter and says in a happy tone “You won’t be silly enough to have sex with boys until you’re at least 30!”
My immediate question: “But what if she likes girls?”
my Dad shaved my head for me when i was 15. turns out i have his same strangely shaped head.
I came home at 16 with a shaved head and a new tattoo while wearing my standard outfit at the time of black miniskirt, ripped black tights, black lace gloves and black sweater. My dad didn’t even blink, he just commented “nice tat” on his way past me in the hallway.
When I was 18, a few months before graduating high school.
Me: I’m going on the pill! I’m not sexually active yet, but, well, that’s what college is for!
Mom: You’re STILL a VIRGIN?!!?!?! You know, you don’t have to be such a prude.
I love all of these stories!
My mother was something to rebel against for sure…and my father totally helped me.
When I was 16 he signed for my first tattoo (birthday present), when my mother found out I was doing acid…again opps…he asked if it still “came on sugar cubes” these days HA!
He’s always been pretty open about his past, while my mother tried to make it seem like she was squeaky clean. Neither of them were, but I totally respect my father for talking to me like a person about it. I’m planning on trying the open communication with my daughter, I hope she writes stories like this about me when she’s older 🙂
I told my dad I wanted to try acid (at 23 years old) and he said we could both try it together. So we did. In the middle of the day. We wandered around together laughing and stroking the grass on the lawn. Afterwards he said “That was quite fun but we probably shouldn’t do it again just in case something bad happens, I hear it can give you brain damage”.
Ha.
It reminds me of my ex’s parents….they were totally liberal (as opposed to my own) they used to constantly ask my ex if he had managed to have sex with me yet (a no-go for me and him…we were way more conservative 😛 )
My father, on the other hand, once refused to talk to me for three days because he saw me hugging a guy 😛
I should mention I was 17 at the time and in my last year of highschool ^.^
When I was a kid, my parents would bring my sister and me to these “legalize pot hippie dance drug fests” in the Appalachian mountains. The only way to rebel against my parents was by not doing drugs and not dropping out of college lol.
My friend was worried about telling her 80 yr old grandma that she was gay and engaged to the woman that grandma has previously believed was just a roommate.
She eventually works up the courage, and breaks the news. Grandma is silent for ages, before eventually saying, nonchalantly: “Well I know you get that from dear. Your grandfather was an awful one for the men. I was the only woman he ever loved.”
My friend ended up being the one shocked!
My parents were pretty supportive of just about anything I wanted to do, because the likelihood was my older sister had tried it to, so they figured I should be okay. Pink hair, nose ring, tattoo-didn’t phase em. During high school I volunteered at Planned Parenthood, and I remember driving with my mum and pointing out the Morgentaler Abortion Clinic. “Oh, I’m so glad you know where that is, I’ve always wondered. The case of condoms and lube under your bed is quite reassuring, too.”
Of course, my mum shocks me sometimes:
(Age twenty, calling home from apartment shared with my boyfriend)
Me: “Mum, I’m bored, what should we do.”
Mum: “Hmmm….have you tried sixty-nine? It’s a lot of fun!”
Me: “What the eff?”
For my 17th birthday, I threw a party at my house. My parents knew about it…and provided lots of music, food, and alcohol. Then, went out for the evening leaving a bunch of teenagers home after taking the keys of anyone who was drinking and telling us “You break it, you bought it!” My mom also told me at 18 “If you choose to smoke pot, that’s fine, just don’t drive after smoking and if it’s laying around in plain sight your dad and I will smoke it. Keep it in your jewelry box. That’s where I kept mine.”
my parents were QUITE liberal with my raising and to this day there isn’t much i can do to piss them off…. but they’d do pretty odd things since they were my parents
– for my 16th birthday my dad gave me his friends special “mix” perfect for smoking,
– that next summer while @ a head/hippie shop in maine i asked my dad to buy me a pair of birkenstocks he obliged but also bought me the most awesome bowl ever (everyone who ever smoked out of it thought it was the greatest thing EVER)
– my parents were directly responsible for my friends and i’s rebelliousness at the ripe old age of 12 my dad started carting us to show in NYC to see whatever band we loved, he would sneak us into CBGB’s because believe it or not, they were rather strict about age getting in then my father was responsible for all the booze my senior class consumed
As i got older my father knew what kind of people i hung out with and i thought i’d piss him off finally with the conversation what drugs i had or hadn’t tried and once again that didn’t shock him. even when i was telling him about the kid i was about to have, still didn’t shock him, now i’m glad he is so liberal because we see eye to eye more as adults than most of my friends and their parents
My mom has always been straight-laced and pretty darn conservative. As a child I wasn’t allowed to wear black, for example – too morbid on a kid, apparently. At 16 I thought I’d be exciting and dye my hair an unnatural shade of fire engine red. My mother liked it so much she made me pose for photos in ‘good lighting’ and paraded me around for her church group to admire. I had elderly nuns complimenting my new style – one even commented that she would do the same if she thought she could get away with it. I dyed it back to brown shortly thereafter. I’m in my 30’s now and my mom routinely gets me to show my tattoos to people and says that if I ever start dressing ‘normally’ she’ll know something is seriously wrong. The only thing she balks at is skull print clothing on my infant daughter. I don’t know why that’s “too much”, but somehow it is.
In the mid-90’s when I was under 18, my mom drove my friend and I to a rave, dropped us off, then picked us up around 5am, after she’d already come in and danced for a while.
There are a few other stories I’d love to share about my mom and I but probably shouldn’t! lol
Let me preface this by saying I don’t mean this in a political way at all, just in the spirit of this article’s theme.
It seems to me like it might be easier than you think to rebel against liberal parents. I imagine that becoming outlandishly conservative in your worldview (difficult to do given that parents are so important in your socialization) and/or joining up with certain rather mainstream religious faiths might get a rise out of them. I guess that is where the tolerance part comes in. Some liberal tolerant parents will accept it and others will be driven up the wall.
This is usually not a very glamourous form of rebellion to teens, which is why this phenomenon is rare.
anonymous, I totally tried that route too! As part of this same 21-year-old era, I tried ALL routes of rebellion — both wild and conservative. On the conservative side, I bought a car (my dad works for public transit) and ran off to the city (they live in the country) to work at a law firm.
And EVEN STILL! my parents remained supportive.
Isn’t that what Family Ties is about? LOL
I think this is where my son is headed. He is a ten year old budding accountant. He likes math and chess and hates getting dirty. He prefers golf shirts and socks that match his outfit. He’s a total square and thinks I’m impossibly embarrassing. I love him tremendously.
My parents had friends whose daughter did just this – she rebelled by going to a church youth group. They were horrified! It was hilarious.
– I took my mom to get her first tattoo. I still have none.
– I spent all of high school sneaking around to avoid getting caught smoking pot. When I was in college, my mom asked if I’d ever tried and revealed to me that she smokes daily. Now when I come home, she and my younger brothers are passing a joing around the kitchen table.
– When my brother came out (at 14!) my mom was so excited that she told all her friends and relatives before he could.
– My dad has told me that dropping acid is “fun, but not as enlightening as everyone says it is.”
Also, my dad apparantly wanted to leave a fishbowl full of condems on the mantle in our family room. My mom vetoed that. But they did allow by high school boyfriend and I to have sleepovers for a good 6 months before I went to college.
Oh, and my mom asked me to buy her a bong on her last visit to my husband and I. I did not oblige.
Dad said something similar to my brother once about magic mushrooms. In a pizza restaurant. (Most of his random drug stories were told in pizza restaurants… not sure what that represents!)
lol @ anonymous – My husband & I joke that our son will end up rebelling by joining the Mormons or becoming a preppy type young Republican.
i swear that’s going to happen to me too!
but it’s bound to happen where we live :/
(i’m rasing my son in bergen county, nj just in the shadows of NYC the breading ground for preppy republicans OR awesome kids rebelling against their parents and since i was one of those rebelling kids my son is going to go the way of the preppy Republican)
My parents are getting a little more conservative as they age, but they definitely had some wild days that show through in some of their parenting methods.
They’ve always had a pretty hands-off approach to things. My mother has never liked my tendency towards darker clothing, but she always let me wear whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t look like a “streetwalker,” something I never managed – at least, not in her presence. With alcohol, she said I could drink whatever I wanted and however much I wanted as long as I did it at home. Last year, she suggested that I just fool around with boys instead of acquiring a steady boyfriend – she’s worried that a boyfriend will distract me from my studies, but I guess she still wants me to have fun. I was frustrated at the time, but it’s hilarious to me now.
Both of my parents were conservative enough when I was a kid, but when I got older my relationship with my mom changed, to the point where she buys pot and shares it with my fiance and asks my advice about where to buy strap-ons so she and her girlfriend can try it. Good times. 🙂
My dad is a musician and all of his friends growing up were musicians. They baby sat us, and it was disconcerting to my grandmother that the tattooed long haired freaks were responsible for our care. When we were in elementary school our out-of-school friends were pretty much dictated by whose parents would allow them to go to the bar on Friday night. I can remember passing out in booths begging to be taken home, and having my parents say “just one more set”. By the time I was in high school and all my friends were sneaking into bars, they were the last place that I wanted to go.
my parents are librarians, I didn’t even get my ears pierced til i was 17, and now I have pink and purple hair, tattoos and i’m (almost)divorced! they’ve also never approved of anyone I’ve ever dated! lol -but they DO like my career choice of primary teacher…. I think I’m pretty restrained given all that!
I remember being 14 and going to a party where people were passing a joint. I didn’t smoke it with them, but when I came home my dad smelled it on me. I told him the truth and asked him if he’d ever smoked dope. He thought about it, and told me that it always made him sick to his stomach and that there was a high, but it wasn’t worth the queasiness. Because he was so honest with me, I never felt the need to light up. 🙂