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The Things Our [Parents] Told Us
An-D
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
EnthusiastAshevilleRegistered User regular
Oh parents.
I'm sure thats a sentiment we can all share. Parents are so old and out of touch, it seems impossible for anything they say to have any merit in the real world. But...as I'm slowly finding out, it does have merit, even if you don't get the message they were trying convey for years.
Parents. They're there for you whenever you need them to be...even if you don't want them to be.
As I'm getting older, my dad in particular has begun to tell me more stories about his youth - some which seem normal, and some that are just too-crazy-not-to-be-real. Some of which have some actual advice laced into it that you can use in real life.
I submit that this thread should be used for such tales that our collective parents pass to us - be they true to life, bizarre or riddled with more lessons about life than an episode of Scrubs.
================
I'll start, and while this isn't necessarily a story that has advice in it, it certainly made me think my dad was kind of awesome.
As I believe I've stated in another thread, my dad was in the Navy for most of his late-teens/twenties. He was stationed all over the place, but Korea was the place he was at the longest (South Korea, I should say). He lived off base and rather than drive, he rode a bike to work everyday.
Typically this wasn't a problem.
One day, he's riding a bike down a quiet road, heading to work when a jeep pulls up in front of him and a bunch of Korean-dudes basically jump him. They put a bag over his head, throw him and his bike in the jeep and speed off into the jungle.
He is eventually (like an hour, two hours) unmasked in a little village-thing in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't recognize anything or anybody....its just jungle, village-camp-thing and mean-looking Koreans. Some dude takes his Navy shirt and he's questioned (meanly but not violently). My dad finds out pretty quick that they're some communist guerrilla group and of course, doesn't tell them anything but his name.
He's put in a bamboo cage (a really crudely-constructed bamboo cage, he was pretty sure he could've broken it open) and the Korean go off on their own. They seemed kind of mad, and unsure of what to do....like they got the wrong guy or something.
So for three days, my dad is treated pretty well and read occasional selections from the Communist Manifesto. While this goes on, he occasionally tries to debate with them about the awesomeness of capitalism and democracy, all the while thinking he could go Rambo on the entire little camp.
On the third day, some higher up of the group shows up and looks at my dad. My dad thought the guy was going to execute him, but instead the guy turns around and yells at the others. It is assumed that it was something along the line of: "This guy is a low-ranking American! You guys are dumb! Why did you kidnap him? I should kill you all for being so dumb!"
My dad is re-bagged and taken to where he was picked up and dropped off. They didn't return his shirt *or* his expensive bike. My dad hitched a ride to the Navy base (he had been "AWOL" for three days now).
The Navy chewed him out for the next three days, asking him what he told the group (nothing), where they were (they were already gone) and generally treated him like a criminal. Eventually a friend of his (an Admiral he did work for) showed up and told the people yelling at my dad to fuck off, basically.
Than life basically continued as normal for him.
==
On a more 'Thats nuts' childhood thing: When I was little, my dad use to tell me and my brothers that if we left his side while we were at a store, gypsies would steal us and sell us Mexico to make rugs. To this day, I do not trust gypsies.
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I think thats a good start. What are some of the things your parents told you about their life or good heart-warming stories that helped shape your life for the better (or worse?)?
I'm sure thats a sentiment we can all share. Parents are so old and out of touch, it seems impossible for anything they say to have any merit in the real world. But...as I'm slowly finding out, it does have merit, even if you don't get the message they were trying convey for years.
Parents. They're there for you whenever you need them to be...even if you don't want them to be.
As I'm getting older, my dad in particular has begun to tell me more stories about his youth - some which seem normal, and some that are just too-crazy-not-to-be-real. Some of which have some actual advice laced into it that you can use in real life.
I submit that this thread should be used for such tales that our collective parents pass to us - be they true to life, bizarre or riddled with more lessons about life than an episode of Scrubs.
================
I'll start, and while this isn't necessarily a story that has advice in it, it certainly made me think my dad was kind of awesome.
As I believe I've stated in another thread, my dad was in the Navy for most of his late-teens/twenties. He was stationed all over the place, but Korea was the place he was at the longest (South Korea, I should say). He lived off base and rather than drive, he rode a bike to work everyday.
Typically this wasn't a problem.
One day, he's riding a bike down a quiet road, heading to work when a jeep pulls up in front of him and a bunch of Korean-dudes basically jump him. They put a bag over his head, throw him and his bike in the jeep and speed off into the jungle.
He is eventually (like an hour, two hours) unmasked in a little village-thing in the middle of nowhere. Doesn't recognize anything or anybody....its just jungle, village-camp-thing and mean-looking Koreans. Some dude takes his Navy shirt and he's questioned (meanly but not violently). My dad finds out pretty quick that they're some communist guerrilla group and of course, doesn't tell them anything but his name.
He's put in a bamboo cage (a really crudely-constructed bamboo cage, he was pretty sure he could've broken it open) and the Korean go off on their own. They seemed kind of mad, and unsure of what to do....like they got the wrong guy or something.
So for three days, my dad is treated pretty well and read occasional selections from the Communist Manifesto. While this goes on, he occasionally tries to debate with them about the awesomeness of capitalism and democracy, all the while thinking he could go Rambo on the entire little camp.
On the third day, some higher up of the group shows up and looks at my dad. My dad thought the guy was going to execute him, but instead the guy turns around and yells at the others. It is assumed that it was something along the line of: "This guy is a low-ranking American! You guys are dumb! Why did you kidnap him? I should kill you all for being so dumb!"
My dad is re-bagged and taken to where he was picked up and dropped off. They didn't return his shirt *or* his expensive bike. My dad hitched a ride to the Navy base (he had been "AWOL" for three days now).
The Navy chewed him out for the next three days, asking him what he told the group (nothing), where they were (they were already gone) and generally treated him like a criminal. Eventually a friend of his (an Admiral he did work for) showed up and told the people yelling at my dad to fuck off, basically.
Than life basically continued as normal for him.
==
On a more 'Thats nuts' childhood thing: When I was little, my dad use to tell me and my brothers that if we left his side while we were at a store, gypsies would steal us and sell us Mexico to make rugs. To this day, I do not trust gypsies.
============
I think thats a good start. What are some of the things your parents told you about their life or good heart-warming stories that helped shape your life for the better (or worse?)?
An-D on
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When I say a lot, I mean a lot; everything from walking straight home in the middle of the school day between periods, to skipping every assigned class to play dodgeball in gym class every period instead, to purchasing and tossing at least three dozen blackcat fireworks in each rain gutter oh his street, binding them all together with one very long fuse and lighting them all off at the same time to make it sound like there was a colossal shootout in the hood.
Of course his parents never heard about this because, hey, their deaf.
Something she said that actually meant something, though, was what she said on her death bed. It was suicide. Before she died I got to see her. She rolled her head over and barely spoke, "This is the most selfish thing I've ever done. I'm sorry." She died several hours later from an overdose on Tylenol.
I
My dad used to go to church, and feels that means that I should have some kind of "morality" that he has instilled by me via his very presence. This is why my dad hates me because I had sex.
My dad has told me since I was 11 that I would be paying for University myself.
My dad likes fishing because it's "quiet". I find it "boring".
One more year...
My dad is a jerk.
I'm also pretty sure she never got her bike back.
Why are old people so mean?
TheRealBadger, that is also one of my favorites. The one about black and white photos is even better though. There's also a daily four-panel about how light bulbs and vacuum cleaners work (hint: it's not electricity).
My mom was a lot like this. She gave the same girl I mentioned earlier various birth control items. I miss her a lot, especially since now all I've got is her devoutly Christian family that won't talk to me anymore and my father who disapproved so much of me moving in with my girlfriend a few years ago that he withdrew all the money from my savings account. I got it back eventually.
My grandma is fucking awesome. I remember asking her what her mother was like, and she told me about her first day of school. Before she got on the bus the only words her mother (my great-grandmother) said to her were, "You don't take no shit from nobody". I think that needs to be our family motto.
But he did have some really cool experiences, of which im quite jealous. His time as a geologist in Indonesia's wild country were full of adventures. There is a photo of him, very white and hippy looking, in the back of truck with about 14 men with AK's.... I think he has a t-shirt on saying "give peace a chance". After asking him about it, it turns out those men were from Indonesia's government, to protect their investment (i.e., my father) from the rebels in the jungle.
He also had a pilots license, and flew cesnas, even being in one when it was struck by lightning.
He took helicopters into work (which was in the middle of Kalimantan at the time) and camped in the jungle for weeks while prospecting. He told me about the time when his helo pilot friend had to do "maneuvers" for his log books, including a scary "auto-rotation" maneuver, which involved turning off the main rotor, and falling to spin the rotor and allow restart of the engine. One of these trips resulted in the discovery of, at the time, probably the worlds 2nd largest gold seam while working for Rio Tinto.
I was there for a few of the times, as a wee lad, and there are photos of my whole family (which at the time was me, my sister and mother and father) gone bush for a few weeks to spend time with him while he was on the job.
But still, a whole bunch of that could be lies. Im 21 now and I still don't know the truth of it all. Sometimes I want to flat out ask, but then most of the time I don't want to know a flat out answer.
I listened to him, it didn't help. He never told me that if you don't volunteer, they volunteer you.
Oh well, he tried.
A lot of stories you hear from parents have this quality to them. Are they exaggerating to make themselves seem cooler/more exciting? Its hard to know, and harder to ask about. Not many people want to destroy that image of their parents being mauled by a tiger.
In other news, 'Big Fish' was a pretty good movie.
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
The teacher started off the game, and the phrase went around the circle until it got to the second to last person, my dad. Being the troublemaking little boy my dad was, my dad said something completely different. So when the teacher asked the girl what the message was, what was it?
"The teacher is a fat cow"
My grandfathers farm didn't have electricity until 1981, so when they were kids my dad, (who was born in 1954), and his brothers used to shoot out the ceramic insulators on the power lines. They figured if they didn't have power why should anyone else. Anyways one time the guys from the power company were out fixing the lines and seen my dad and his brothers, and started chasing them on foot through the trees. Until my dad realized that "why are we running we're the ones with the guns," and turned and shot acouple of time over the heads of the power workers. Once they got back home they power company guys were at their house talking to my grandad, ofcourse they had hidden their guns and picked a bunch of berries to claim that they couldn't be responable because they were just out picking berries. They never got in any trouble over it either, my grandfather didn't give a fuck, it didn't interupt his lack of electricity.
Another gun story, I'll make this one short though. One day out hunting and fucking around with their guns they got into a squable and threaten to shoot each other. Long story short on of my uncles had a bullet lodged in his liver until the day he died, some 40ish years later. It wasn't quite intentional.
Really the lessons learned are don't fuck with guns, well like they did anyways. I think he turned out pretty normal concerning his childhood.
Basically, he use to do secret messenger work (carrying around encrypted messages to different people). One day, he gets pulled aside by one of his bosses and told that the KGB knew who he was and it wasn't safe for him to be doing that kind of messenger work anymore. He show my dad a folder with a bunch of pictures of him taken from random angles (like people secretly snapping pictures). I'm not sure how the Navy got ahold of KGB files (stole them, probably) but they had one really clear picture of him on a Navy base in Korea (getting off a helicopter).
Sooo...for a while anyway, my dad was a target of the KGB. Thats both
Es our frisbee now!
My mother told me the same thing and I never believed her till we visited the town in Pittsburgh where she grew up. You walk down one hill, up another hill, down the other side of it, and then back up another hill to the school. So technically, she was right.
Also, when she was six, some kid called her a "Dirty Dego" (we're Italian) and she punched him in the nose and broke it.
My dad grew up on a farm in Louisiana in the 50s and didn't have plumbing or electricity till he was in high school.
He joined the Navy during Vietnam and he and my uncle (who served together) have dropped hints over the years that there was much debauchery with Asian women in those years. I've never gotten the whole story out of them.
A couple years ago I dated an executive assistant from my dad's office. She told me that at some office function I had become the topic of conversation and he told this group of women that I needed to get laid. The girl that I was dating told me she decided to take him up on that offer.
Awkward...
24 and still not dating. Goin' to the Air Force not gonna date not gonna date not gonna date....
I don't remember. Probably not, I probably had forgotten by Monday morning.
Steam | Twitter
I was told that by many people as well. I don't know if it's true, but it usually stops burning after a bit, so either it's true, or it's just the alcohol burning away your nerve endings. I like both ideas equally.
"Son, you might not understand it now, but you will eventually. There are some missions where you must decide between the Army or your god and your family. If it ever comes to that, I hope you make the right decision."
"....god and family?"
"yes, Fuck the Army."
He was a former Marine.
Either way, it's a much nicer thing to say than "stop being a pussy."
I actually got really interested in learning more about my parents lately, and I had long conversations with them individually. My dad was a don juan when he was young, and admitted to being in bed with 3 women at once. He married my mom when she was 21 and he was 30. After I was born, apparently she got involved with another guy and my dad found out it was his nephew.
My mom told me all this, and my dad just doesn't want me to know...i guess he figures life is ugly enough withough talking about terrible things of the past. I think my mom just wanted to get it off her chest. They are still together, coming up on 30 years of marriage soon.
People are terrible to each other. But what can you do right? That's fucking life!
I just stopped and thought, "Shit, that was blunt." He then proceeded to tell me that I was the best mistake he ever made, but having kids at a young age(mom was 16 and dad 17 when I was born) is something he never wanted me to go through. After he said that I couldn't help but laugh because it was so out of left field.
It's funny how things like that are crystal clear for the rest of your days. I'm laughing about it right now as I type this.
I'm 24 and kid free. I guess it that bluntness worked.
True, though I have a feeling that if/when the day comes, I will indeed be the kind of dad who says shit like "don't be a pussy."
Heh. I'm pretty convinced I was a mistake as well. If not a full-on mistake, I was definitely un-planned. I've been told several times that I was conceived in a lake. Yes, my parents were fucking while skinny-dipping. There's no way they planned to conceive that night.
My dad played a lot of Wolfenstein and Doom when I was younger and one day he finally let me watch him (my mom didn't want us seeing the blood) So my dad took me on his lap and put my fingers on the controls. He proceeded to show me how to back up into a corner so I won't get shot from behind.
I've been camping even since.
1. The first rule of carpentry: "If it doesn't fit, go get a bigger hammer."
2. Always be polite to people in the service industry. Tip well.
3. The trick to lying is convincing yourself that you're telling the truth.
4. If you're charming enough, you can get away with a lot.
My mom taught me:
1. The best restrooms in the world are in the lobbies of nice hotels.
"If you have a friend who is true and blue; fuck him before he fucks you"
rather than be a douche, i simply don't get close enough to people to have to worry about this anymore.