Parenting fails. Something you have done or your parents did to you. I can vividly remember back in the day my mom sending me out to buy her cigarettes.
I served my son fish sticks and said it was chicken "fingers" because I knew if I said it was fish he wouldn't try it. He was very sweet about it. He leaned over to me and said, "Mom, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I think the chicken is 'bad'." I laughed and laughed.
Not a parent fail but an older sibling fail. I was being babysat by an older sibling, they decided it was totally okay to let me watch Pulp Fiction with them. I was 8, and my life was never the same.
My mom sent me to school knowing full well I was getting the chicken pox (my sisters had them the week before) because I had a vocab test first period.
Also, my parents did not believe my wheezy almost-dying ass, when I told them I hated peanut butter. They realized I had the whole fatal food allergy thing when I was 8 and almost kicked the bucket at a family reunion. This was in the 80s though, and food allergy awareness was not really a thing.
When I was about ten my mom sent me down to the department store to buy her a brassiere. She wrote down the size and at the store I gave the piece of paper to the sales lady, who then pulled a bunch of bra boxes out of the bin, and took the bras out of the packaging so I could get a good look at them. I picked out one with some frilly lace on the top of the cups. My mom was pleased.
Also, my mom would never spring for a new gym uniform, so I always had to wear the outdated-hand-me-down shit from my sister, who was five years older. It was tragic.
My mom also had me cut off all of my hair in second grade and get a perm.
Honestly, I don't know how I'm a normal functioning adult.
I never child-proofed a damn thing or used a baby monitor. Maybe that's my bad parenting thus far?! My kid is still kickin' it though, so I don't know. I find all the helicopter-parenting devices to be such a con.
I was a friendless intellectual nerd at the local public school in the Midwest. The school encouraged my parents to put me into a gifted and talented program so I could hang out with all the other intellectual nerds. My parents wouldn't let me go because they thought the program was 'elitist.' Key 8 more years of nerd friendlessness until I could f**k off to New York City and meet other people like me.
My dad was very strict and he was pissssssed the first time I got my eyebrows arched. I was 14. He told me I had to do a report on why eyebrows were important!!!
We still laugh about it when we get together. He said he has no clue what he was thinking, just was afraid that I was growing up too fast and didn't want me to walk around looking surprised or with drawn on brows lol.
Oh Lord. Let me preface this by saying that I did have good parents and I turned out just fine. They just made a few questionable choices.
I used to babysit my younger brother at the pool. This started when I was 8, he was 5. They'd drop us off with a five dollar bill and pick us up four hours later. Lucky neither one of us drowned or got kidnapped!
I never got "the talk." My mom said "You have sex ed at school, right? (I nod) Good." The end.
When I got my first period, my mom's reply was "Oh shit." That was it.
My dad would chain smoke two packs of Winstons morning, noon and night despite me having severe asthma. Plus, my mom would rock major fur coats, and don't even get me started about the flocked, real Christmas trees my family put up. I was in the ER like on a daily basis as a child.
Also, I found out there was no Santa Claus because I got an asthma attack while in bed and saw all the adults in my family putting all the toys together. I was 7.
This is so easy. I could write a book. Love you Mom!! She's watching my son right now, actually. Irony?
During Lent, my Dziadzu (grandfather)used to go this small bar/eating place to get fish dinners for Fridays. My job was to be sent by my Babci (grandmother)to go get him. I was 11 or 12 at the time. I used to sit at the bar with him while we waited for the food.
oh and I have 2 sisters who are 13-15 years older than me and when they were kids they dressed up like hookers for Halloween and my parents thought it was funny and cute. According to them that was a popular costume for little girls in 1978--but I dont believe them ---can anyone back that claim up?
My dad took my and my sister to see Dracula (with Frank Langella). Hate all scary movies but vampire movies. Anyhoo, my sister was sitting in between me and my Dad. At a particularly tense part of the film, my Dad reached over and poked me in the neck. The place was quiet and I screamed bloody murder. There were people behind us laughing so hard and then chuckling throughout the rest of the film. When I remind him of it, my Dad laughs and laughs...
I had severe bulimia as a teen and broke down and told my Mom I needed help. She said only fat people needed help with eating disorders. I was bulimic for about 5 more years, until I moved away from home, upon which time the problem just went away on its own and has never come back.
Also, when I was first climbing the stairs she wanted to get a picture of it. She did, and as soon as it was snapped I fell down them. That's SO her. Hahaha
I used to buy smokes for my dad all the time when I was a kid! I vividly remember being six years old and buying them at the corner store. Eventually, I had to get my dad to call down there before I picked them up.
I remember being ticked off when I was around 10 because I couldn't pick up his cigarettes anymore because, you know, laws.
when i was 13, my dad, against good judgement and official government weather center warnings, took me to a movie i'd been harping on and on and on (and on!) about--in the middle of an impending cat. 3 hurricane, w/ extreme rising water on the roadways. we had a great time though, despite being shut in with a theater-full of fellow movie-goers until the next morning. to this day it goes down in family history as one of my favorite days ever. #daddysgirl
My parents took us to the bar all the time when we were kids. We drank RC Cola & ate snacks, played the jukebox, and pool. They left us home a lot too, probably from about the ages of 9/10 years old. This was in a rural area, so no abundance of daycare or babysitters.
Also, from my mother was convinced that straight hair was against nature, bad and had no body, so from the time I was in first grade until high school, she forced us (my sister and me)to get perms. I haven't had a perm since I was 18, no child should be forced to have tight curls and a bad chemical smell radiating though the atmosphere at such a young age.
"OUTTA THE MOUTH OF BABES" As a young parent I made poor choices when it came to letting my daughter watch movies with me. When she was 7 I had KINGPIN on and his Landlady in the movie did the ole "peace sign over the mouth-tongue sticking through" act...well my daughter mimicked that and asked me what it meant! Obviously, I couldn't tell her the truth! So,I basically pleaded with her not to imitate it, especially at school!
My mom hit me with the car on purpose. I was walking in front of it and she thought it would be funny to scare me, so she hit the gas and rammed into me, a ten year old. She claims she didn't mean to hit me as hard as she did, but she doesn't like me so no one believed her.
The summer of '74 I was 7 years old & we had moved across the state so my mom could escape an extremely abusive relationship. It was a hot summer night & I had fallen asleep on the couch. At some point in the wee hours there was a lot of banging on the door so I answered it. There was my mom police officers on either side holding her up. They said "is this your mother?" I said yes, so they set her inside. She was so drunk she couldn't walk or form a coherent sentence. I helped clean her up & put her to bed. Ahhhh, the 70s....a magical time when cops would hand messed up parents over to kids & not call CPS!
Not my parents or me, but one time I was out at the bar and saw a little kid sleeping on the floor below the dart board. I was pretty loud and obnoxious when I said to a friend, "Holy shit! Some piece of garbage has their kid sleeping on the floor of a bar!" Then I did a stealth scan around the bar and saw one mid 40's couple look over at me.
I walked back to the pool table, keeping them in the corner of my eye. They went around and talked to a couple different people and pointing at me. I don't know if they were telling people why they were leaving or trying to get someone to help the dude kick my ass, but I shuffled a couple empty bottles to within reach and kept a cue stick in my hand. 10 minutes late they picked up their kid and left.
My mom was extremely religious and thought she talked to god. I was afraid of the dark growing up because my mom said she used to see demons and spirits and we could hear her telling them in the middle of the night to get out in the name of Jesus. Scared the shit out of us kids and I didn't realize until later that she was NUTS. I'm sure she passed her crazy gene to me. To be fair, she had a really rough, abusive childhood and probably needed to disassociate to survive.
hmmm. my parents are hippies, so me & my brother had an awsum childhood. one thing my mom did that pissed me off was put soap in my mouth & made me chase it w/ milk when i was 5. thats it.
Baby Nom rolled off my bed yesterday. We were cuddling and the next thing I knew, his feet were disappearing over the edge of the bed and I heard a thud. He stretched, his head was already on the edge of the bed and gravity just pulled him over.
Terr.i.fy.ing.
And man, the breaths he was drawing to get those ear-piercing wails out. It was five seconds of screaming followed by ten seconds of drawing as big a breath as possible (you know it's gonna be an intense cry with those big silences in between). No real damage, though. He half-landed on a laundry basket full of clean stuff so he was mostly just scared.
My mom NEVER had the talk with me! When I was 8 I showed Chauncey my wondersnatch and he showed me his weird vienna sausage and I thought we had sex. I came home and asked my mom what happens when girls have sex too young...and she said "well... they either get pregnant or become hoes or both"
On top of that Chauncey and I got into a fight on the playground because I thought he needed to do right by me and he was just showing his sauadge to all the other girls in class...so it was a very emotional time for me. I remember praying over the next 2-3 years for God to forgive me for having sex and to not let me be pregnant or turn into a hoe!
It wasn't until I had Sex Ed in the 6th grade that I learned that Chauncey's vienna sausage had not been inserted into my wondersnatch, therefore I was still a virgin, not a hoe, and clearly not expecting....WHEW!
My mom drew a diagram on a napkin of the inside of the female body to explain to me how my period would work while sitting at a concession stand at the flea market. I wanted the earth to swallow me up.
Nowadays you aren't allowed to leave your children unsupervised until they are 12, but back in the day (the day being 1994 or so), I started babysitting when I was 9. There were a bunch of families with young kids in our neighborhood, and the only kid who was of age to be a babysitter was my 11 year old sister, so if she wasn't available, I was the next option. Granted, I was a pretty responsible 9 y/o (I'm not saying that the kids were always in bed exactly on time, but I was definitely with it enough to keep them alive & fed). Nowadays though, when I tell people that story, they act like it's crazy though (which I guess it is, when I have kids, I can't see myself leaving them with a 9 year old)
My dad used me as a narc. He was an investigative reporter and used me to buy a "cocaine kit" (small mirror and straw) at a local head shop as part of a story on head shops selling drug paraphernalia to kids. One of my stoner friends was the clerk who sold it to me, and she got in a shitload of trouble.
The bizarre thing was, me an all my stoner friends knew that my dad smoked weed. The could have totally narc'd him out, but they didn't.
Oh yeah, and my mother, being a Marxist social worker, decided it would be a good idea to explain the birds and the bees to me...when I was six years old.
These are quite comical. Kids these days are just wimpy. They need some fine parenting like we all had.
Few stories to tell, my parents allowed my sister to watch me and my brother, she was 13. She decided to take the car for a joy ride AND to stop and get cigarettes with both my brother and I sitting in the front seat. No seatbelt of course. I just remember her repeating over and over, "don't tell mom".
My uncle would also give me a half of beer every time I would sleep over at his house to get me to go to sleep. I was 5!
My mom used to lock my brother, sister and I out of the house most afternoons in the summer. I have asthma. Talk about scary. If we wanted a drink of water, we had to use the hose. She'd let us back in the house before my dad came home from work. One day, I told my dad about it. The door stayed unlocked from then on.
My brother and sister always got birthday presents, but I had a few birthdays where I didn't get any presents because my mom said that the meds and the allergy shots I got WERE my presents. Sucked.
My senior prom dress for the only dance I ever went to, was made by my mom. My sister got to buy her dress the next year ('78), and got a new winter coat, a new wardrobe, and got braces. I went without a winter coat my senior year (grew out of my old one), and still suffer from bad teeth from not having braces as a kid. My brother bought me a coat for Christmas that year. Thirty-seven years later, and I still have it. Best Christmas present ever!
My mom used to lock my brother, sister and I out of the house most afternoons in the summer. I have asthma. Talk about scary. If we wanted a drink of water, we had to use the hose. She'd let us back in the house before my dad came home from work. One day, I told my dad about it. The door stayed unlocked from then on.
My brother and sister always got birthday presents, but I had a few birthdays where I didn't get any presents because my mom said that the meds and the allergy shots I got WERE my presents. Sucked.
My senior prom dress for the only dance I ever went to, was made by my mom. My sister got to buy her dress the next year ('78), and got a new winter coat, a new wardrobe, and got braces. I went without a winter coat my senior year (grew out of my old one), and still suffer from bad teeth from not having braces as a kid. My brother bought me a coat for Christmas that year. Thirty-seven years later, and I still have it. Best Christmas present ever!
These Mte great! Cept for the sad ones. When my brother and suster and I were little we'd always get in trouble on ling car rides. My dad would pukl over and make us line up for the belt. This was the Seventies. And he really is a great guy.
Your stories are appalling! Makes my story about my Mom forcing me to eat scrambled eggs on weekends so minor! I tried hiding them under napkins and tossing them but she always caught me. As an adult I learned that there are other ways to make eggs that are delicious. I still razz her about this.
My mother kept her speed pills in the same jar as her ibuprofen. The pills were coincidentally small and red, same as the medicine. In 7th grade I got in her purse and took two, thinking they'd relieve my adolescent period cramps. I had no idea at the time what speed was, or that my mom took it. By the time I got to first period in school I had a full blown panic attack - I think Red Dawn was a popular movie around that time , and I was convinced the Russians were a) coming and b) going to come crashing through my school windows . I got sent to the office and the first thing the school nurse asked was what was I on. My mother was livid and insisted I took the drugs on purpose and how dare I humiliate her like that. The funny part is, I was part of the " Just Say No " generation , so drugs really scared the crap out of me. I never tried anything until I was 22, my roommates were strippers and I was introduced to cocaine for the first time. ( which I hated ) - to this day my mother still believes I knew what I was doing with those pills. And to this day I always swear I will never be that kind of mom:
My Dad every Sunday used to go out and get a huge variety of two dozen fresh donuts; it was his job to watch the three kids and let Mom sleep in that morning. That is an awful lot of sugar for three little kids, and we not only were wired but I now cannot eat a donut because I just overdosed on them, period. The really shocking thing is that only in the past year or so did we learn that Mom never had a clue that he was feeding us pure sugar. I have no idea how he hid it and certainly didn't realize he was even trying to -- we kids just thought it was our Sunday a.m. routine.
At 12 my mom had me by the Playboy issue with Jimmy Carter interviewed. I told the clerk and he just laughed and sold it to me. If I was smarter I coud have used that excuse at other stores and then sold the mags to my friends with a good profit added on.
I think my dad secretly wamted me to have an accident because he let me drive and take our race boat out alone when I wax 13. I remember cruising by the lake house going about 40mph and my dad signalling to floor it.
My Dad used to go waterskiing with 6 year old me on his shoulders or back, but at least I was wearing a life jacket. I remember being both thrilled and terrified all at once. But I did grow up afraid to try waterskiing. Sometimes he would also be smoking a cig at the same time while holding the rope in the other hand while I hung on for dear life. He also gave me coca cola to drink on the nights my mom worked her evening shift AND put it in my soccer thermos before dropping me at games. I was shocked and embarrassed when I found out that wasn't normal. He always meant well and he still cracks me up.
On November 21, 1980 at the ripe old age of 9½ my parents had enough of my complaining about reoccurring stomach pain. After numerous trips to the doctor, he chalked it up to "growing pains" and my parents sent me to school feeling awful. Needless to say, it wasn't growing pains as during roll call my appendix burst! Not aware of what had happened (I passed out), I awoke in a hospital room, picked up the phone and called home. First question out of my mouth was not, "what happened to me?", but "who shot J.R.?"
Not sure which is worse, not believing me about feeling ill or the fact that they let me watch Dallas with them and my grandparents every Friday night!!!
I lived with my grandparents, both drunks. As a result, Christmas presents were usually handed over on Christmas morning, still in the Kmart bag. This one particular Christmas, grandma handed over the most hideous hat ever, which no self respecting 12 year old would be caught dead in. It was white, plush fur and shaped like the bishop on a chess board. My dismay must have shown on my face. When I tried it on, to my great relief, it was much too small. My grandmother, noting my relief, screamed at me that I obviously hated the hat and was deliberately making my head too big.
I learned how to make a gin martini before I was 10.
I had my first contact high before I could make a gin martini.
My grandmother used to serve my brother and I watered down Coors in dixie cups.
My mom learned to smoke because my grandma had her light her cigarettes for her.
I can remember being behind the bar at a bowling alley before I was 8.
Parenting fail for my own kids: I had been home from having my second child via c-section. My ex husband thought it would be fun to have our son, who was a year and a half old at the time, help him sweep the kitchen. My ex looked away for a moment and my son fell down the basement stairs. He bounced off the concrete floor on his head.
Mind you, I was in bed recovering from a c-section with a newborn to nurse. I had to stay up with my son to make sure he didn't have a concussion. He survived the night and is a brilliant and wonderful teenager.
The one tiny bonus I received was by having to stay up all night long, I was able to watch the 2000 presidential election results change from Al Gore being the winner to George Bush. Oh, and my ex will always be a worse parent than me. :p
After my mom died I was my brother's keeper. My dad didn't have a clue, I was eight, my brother was four. Dad did hire a housekeeper, who stole my mother's jewelry and slept with my dad. He remarried briefly, she came with two kids. They got new wardrobes for the start of school. My brother and I got new underwear. My dad didn't notice. From age ten to twelve I was the sole caretaker for my brother. My dad went to school during the day and worked nights. We survived, barely. When dad married again we went to CA for a vacation. Dad and new mom slept in the small trailer we were pulling. My brother and I slept in the car. A cop woke me and scared me to death tapping on the window with his flashlight. He woke up my dad and read him the riot act for leaving us kids in the car alone. After he left, we were back in the car alone. My childhood was only good up to the age of eight.
Oh, the old days! Nobody though anything about putting kids in the car with no seatbelts, and when we were little my sister and I thought it was fun to ride with my dad to the liquor store (drive through!) where the man that owned it would give is candy and Dad would smoke on top of us. Everybody in my family was mystified that my sister had allergies! :/ And I I'm not mistaken, there was a gun under the seat that would roll out every once in awhile! Lord, how did we make it?
I've got about a million stories about my mother from her granola-freak phase in the 70's. Like the time she served up fried chicken breaded with wheat germ 'cuz she thought it would be healthier. Or the carob birthday cake that looked and tasted like compressed coffee grounds.
She used to drag me to all these granola-freak expositions. I still remember the pyramid power nutballs walking around with pyramids on their heads. I was the only kid in junior high with a copy of the Communist Manifesto in his locker. Ah the 70's....
Oh, the drinking and driving stories? My cuz and I used to visit his family in Wasilla, AK during the summer. Yes, that Wasilla, at the same time that little Sarah Palin was growing up there. He would take us into Palmer to get beer at the drive-through liquor store, and down half a six on the way home. Once we were out of town he'd put me or my cuz on his lap and let us steer the car. At night, on deserted gravel roads in the Alaskan outback, barreling around blind corners often blocked by moose. He was a great old cuss though.
Inappropriate movies at a young age (Stripes and Animal House)? Check. Sent to the store to buy cigarettes? Check. Taught how to tend bar and worked behind the bar before I was tall enough to see over it? Check. Dad drove around drunk with all of us "flipping" from the back seat to the back back of the station wagon? Check. Add to that my grandmother used to give us magic markers and have us color bathing suits on all the naked ladies in my dad's playboy and penthouse magazines. Growing up in the 70's was the best! Sorry for those of you with the sad stories.
This was back in 1980, so I was 4 and vividly remember it. My Dad and I had gone to the store to get something and then he stopped in the convenience store to get gas, gigs and a couple of comic books for me (I've been reading actual books since I was 3). Anyway I stayed in the car and told him to get me Spider-Man, Green Lantern and Batman comics. He pumped the gas and left the car running when he went in.
Well, I was curious and got into the driver seat and put the car in drive. Luckily he was just coming out of the store when he saw the car about to go into the road and was able to jump in and put the breaks on before I went over to the other side of the road and run into a building.
After he calmed down (he wasn't mad at me, he realized it was his fault) I cracked him up by saying "You bent my Batman book!"
Oh yeah, learning to drive. My dad used to let me start up our old van when I was 14. You had to really work the choke to get it running and warm. One day he says, "Go ahead and back it out." Of course, with the choke out it was idling at about 2K RPMs. I dropped the clutch, did a quick 180 backwards out of the driveway and rammed right into the neighbor's car parked in front of our house.
My high school driving instructor used to wonder why I was always so nervous. "I've already been in a frickin' traffic accident behind the wheel, ok?"
Jesus I could fill a book with stories. For the sake of brevity, let's keep it simple.
I was a teen. My mother hated my favorite pair of Levi's 501s, so she got those iron-on letters and ironed on the words KICK HERE on the ass of my best jeans.
My dad gave me us cigarettes when we were like 3 or 4.... took us to see the godfather when it came out - never recovered from the cut off horse's head
My mom was also the granola hippie type, B. She was forever remaking things over with whole wheat flour; just for the record angel food cake and egg rolls are no bueno with ww flour. I think the think I hated most as a kid is the thing I appreciate most now: no tv. None at all until I was 13. She shoulda explained to us about the whole "not real" thing, though, I saw a horror movie at a babysitters house at 6 that I can still remember, frame for frame.
Some of these are so sad, I hope everything is better now, y'all
My sisters and brother and I got to ride on the top of our red station wagon with the wood paneling.
I watched horror movies at my sister's slumber parties when I was younger than 10 years old. I love scary movies now! I wasn't scared then and they don't scare me now. I'm one tough mutha and I guess my mom knew it because she didn't even try to make me go to bed during those parties.
Parenting fail: they kept the broken metal climbing structure under the monkey bars. I fell on it and broke my arm. It looked like a U shaped arm!
Some of these are quite sad and I also hope everyone is okay now and time and space help. xoxo
I had a harsh rearing with daily abuse, so I will tell a funny (not downer) one - I helped to transfer bootlegged tobacco and liquor during my newspaper route for my parents. Nobody suspected the sweet paper delivery kid. (But I wasn't allowed to use the oven) lol
My mom took me to a Vegas casino when I was 20. I was nervous, but my mom told me to shit up and play blackjack next to her. Ironically, another girl at my table was carded, but they never asked me my age. On that trip, my mom also urged me to order whiskey sours at the bar. I still drink whiskey sours whenever I am missing her.
Dad let me sip on his Baileys every Friday (it was his end of week unwind drink). It worked - alcohol was never a big deal for me, so I never did the high school party get stupid drunk thing. I've carried on the tradition with my niece and nephew, letting them take a sip when I order a drink.
Never ever wore seat belts never got questioned where I was until mom read my diary that I drank a sloe gin fizz and put me on restriction...got the talk by dad when I was 20...a little late! After raising 6 kids I think my mom was just tired by my time and didn't bother me too much...oh and always late picking me up...I was always the last kid at ballet, school trips whatever...to this day I'm always early picking up my kids
my mom left me in the care of my alcoholic father when i was like 2 and he passed out and someone found me wandering around in a busy street. thanks mom
When I was a kid, my dad would take me to the local bars where he would buy a quart of beer in a cardboard container. He would also let me drive the car with me in his lap, and I've slept on the back window ledge of an old chevy many a time when I was little.
My hubby's parenting fails: When our kids were 4 & 2 (girl and boy) he was up in the attic. Of course they wanted to come up and he yelled "Don't come up here". They did. He then said "Well, you can stay up here but don't MOVE" Hah. Try telling THAT to my son (who was then 2) next thing you know, he hears my daughter gasp, and he looks up to see Ben disappear somewhere in the woodwork...he had stepped off the floor and fallen through the insulation by the stairway ceiling...there were nails sticking out of the wood, and the kid escaped without a scratch. Hubby thrust his hand down the hole, felt around and hauled my son up by the arm...Of course, I didn't hear about this til about 4 years AFTER the fact. I also didn't hear about how my son almost went for a solo subway ride en route to the T'giving day parade in NYC in the company of his daddy and his two uncles...hubby snatched him from the subway just as the doors were starting to close...Thank god now he's 19, he's turned out just fine, and is a great kid, unscathed from his youth with the exception of a few scars from ER visits, and 1 from where mom steristripped him (I'm a nurse) because she thought he had filled his quote of ER visits that year, and they might think we were abusing him....;-)
When I was a teenager, I was on a TV quiz show, and the day before filming, my mom served us frozen chicken parm for dinner. After we'd eaten it, she realized it was three days expired, so she started panicking and freaking out that I'd get food poisoning while on TV. She made me go into the bathroom and make myself throw up to prevent me from getting food poisoning.
After an hour of trying, I learned that I do not have a gag reflex. Also, I didn't get food poisoning, and I won the show.
My mom was a pretty good parent, but my dad was a drunk. Most of the times I remember him growing up, he was either sleeping or partying or mad because wasn't sleeping or partying. He didn't start growing out of that until he was 35, when my sister and I were nearly adults.
I am not the best parent in the world, either, but I am lucky my daughter seems to be turning out okay. I just can't think of any stories that don't make me feel sad or ashamed.
since i can't come up w/ a "parenting fail", i have a parent gold moment from my dad.
i was like 7 or 8, & we went bowling. this was like '91 or '92. & we were about to leave, & my dad had to take a piss, so he gave me a quater to play the arcade. these fukn like 16yr old cunts, roll up on me, & get in my face, saying i "looked" @ them wrong. i'm young, get scared, & start crying my eyes out. my dad comes out, asks wats going on, i tell him wat happened. he spots the girls running into a dudes car. my dad goes to the car, rips open the driver door, of sum fukn random dudes car & says...
"u wanna fuck w/ my daughter & make her cry?! u fukn' deal w/ me!"
Hmmm, my childhood wasn't horrendous but not particularly happy. My father was a mean dick, I told him I wanted the Barbie pool house for Christmas and he said we couldn't afford it but then bought it for my cousin. My parents used to make me give up the few toys I had if one of my cousin's wanted/liked it. I was the youngest of four kids and my mom would leave all of us in the car while she grocery shopped. My oldest brother couldn't have been more than 10. My oldest bro also acted out in a mean way to me and made me watch The Shining when I was 4. FOUR! *Shudder* He's done some really nice things for me along the years, but I still half expect him to torture me in some way since he totally gets off being mean.
I'm feeling a lot better about my own parenting now. LOL I yell a lot, which I hate. But my mom yelled AND hit, so hopefully my kids will be better than me.
Seeing all the drinking ones made me remember a hilarious thing that happened on Christmas Eve of 1987 (I remember because my bro was 2 when he did it).
Ok, we're Catholic so like 98% of Catholics at Christmas my Grandma always had Crown Royal and Cokes for the adults. It was just sitting on the "adults" table (remember when people had adults and kiddie tables for get togethers?) anyway, all her kids and grandkids are there. My brother is the youngest of the grandkids by 7 years. So he had watched all the adults make drinks and his cousins and brother sneak and make them the entire night. He walks over to the table, pulls out a chair, climbs onto the table, grabs a plastic cup then proceeds to pour himself a Crown and Coke.
At age 2.
I forgot who took it away from him, but my Uncle (who I would one day play golf with alongside Alice Cooper) was a bit of a drinker then, took the cup, drank it down in one swallow and then said, "Not bad. JonJon (our nicname for my bro at that age) you can make me another one in a bit".
God I miss those holidays at my Grandma's house. Aging sucks. It's not fair we get to enjoy part of our lives and then live in fear that it's all going to end because people get old and die.
My parents were big stoners & smoked weed daily. They let me get the rolling tray from under the couch & help them roll their joints. I was 5-6. They paid my 16 yr old babysitter in MJ. Then when I was 13, Mom took me to my first bar & let me drink. I got wasted on Lone Star beer. I threw up everywhere that night, all over my bed & room & she told me I had to clean it up, that was my payback for getting drunk. Thanks, Mom.
I think I mentioned my parents were hippies? Also partiers. They tell me that when I was two, I woke up, walked into the party room, grabbed a tall glass full of vodka, drank it straight up and then toddled back to bed.
Also, during one if those parties they found strangers having sex on top of a pile of coats, and me, under the coats.
My parents never had "the talk" with me....thank god!!!!!
ReplyDeleteShout out to my mom about the spinach meatballs of '95.
ReplyDeleteMy parents never got me a class ring
ReplyDeleteYou poor thing!! Lol
DeleteMy Dad took my sister and I to see "Saturday Night Fever" - she was 9, I was 6. My Mom almost KILLED him.
ReplyDeleteMy parents were very overprotective so I never went to any slumber parties.
ReplyDeleteMy mom used to wack my pee pee with a ruler and tell me men are the devil.
ReplyDeleteNah, I think I seen that on Oprah or Donahue back in the 80s.
My Mom served us liver (back when liver was supposed to be good for you) and tried to tell us it was steak.
ReplyDeleteI served my son fish sticks and said it was chicken "fingers" because I knew if I said it was fish he wouldn't try it. He was very sweet about it. He leaned over to me and said, "Mom, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I think the chicken is 'bad'." I laughed and laughed.
DeleteNot a parent fail but an older sibling fail. I was being babysat by an older sibling, they decided it was totally okay to let me watch Pulp Fiction with them. I was 8, and my life was never the same.
ReplyDeleteMy mom told me sex sucks. never say that to an 19 yo virgin or she will fake orgasm till 29
ReplyDeleteMy mom and dad forgot me at a park and it took them over an hour to realize it.
ReplyDeleteAnd spinach meatballs? Spinach pie was a spectacular failure at my house.
Parents told me when I was 5 that they would buy me a horse when I was 12...they figured I wouldn't remember...
ReplyDeleteMy mom sent me to school knowing full well I was getting the chicken pox (my sisters had them the week before) because I had a vocab test first period.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my parents did not believe my wheezy almost-dying ass, when I told them I hated peanut butter. They realized I had the whole fatal food allergy thing when I was 8 and almost kicked the bucket at a family reunion. This was in the 80s though, and food allergy awareness was not really a thing.
When I was about ten my mom sent me down to the department store to buy her a brassiere. She wrote down the size and at the store I gave the piece of paper to the sales lady, who then pulled a bunch of bra boxes out of the bin, and took the bras out of the packaging so I could get a good look at them. I picked out one with some frilly lace on the top of the cups. My mom was pleased.
ReplyDeleteMy mother sent me to borrow cigarettes from a neighbor for my pregnant sister!
ReplyDeleteAlso, my mom would never spring for a new gym uniform, so I always had to wear the outdated-hand-me-down shit from my sister, who was five years older. It was tragic.
ReplyDeleteMy mom also had me cut off all of my hair in second grade and get a perm.
Honestly, I don't know how I'm a normal functioning adult.
My mom and grandmother sent me to the store for their cigs. Also, sat in front seat....no seat belt.
ReplyDeleteDCFS would totally take me away from my parents today!
I never child-proofed a damn thing or used a baby monitor. Maybe that's my bad parenting thus far?! My kid is still kickin' it though, so I don't know. I find all the helicopter-parenting devices to be such a con.
ReplyDeleteI was a friendless intellectual nerd at the local public school in the Midwest. The school encouraged my parents to put me into a gifted and talented program so I could hang out with all the other intellectual nerds. My parents wouldn't let me go because they thought the program was 'elitist.' Key 8 more years of nerd friendlessness until I could f**k off to New York City and meet other people like me.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was very strict and he was pissssssed the first time I got my eyebrows arched. I was 14. He told me I had to do a report on why eyebrows were important!!!
ReplyDeleteWe still laugh about it when we get together. He said he has no clue what he was thinking, just was afraid that I was growing up too fast and didn't want me to walk around looking surprised or with drawn on brows lol.
Oh Lord. Let me preface this by saying that I did have good parents and I turned out just fine. They just made a few questionable choices.
ReplyDeleteI used to babysit my younger brother at the pool. This started when I was 8, he was 5. They'd drop us off with a five dollar bill and pick us up four hours later. Lucky neither one of us drowned or got kidnapped!
I never got "the talk." My mom said "You have sex ed at school, right? (I nod) Good." The end.
When I got my first period, my mom's reply was "Oh shit." That was it.
My dad would chain smoke two packs of Winstons morning, noon and night despite me having severe asthma. Plus, my mom would rock major fur coats, and don't even get me started about the flocked, real Christmas trees my family put up. I was in the ER like on a daily basis as a child.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I found out there was no Santa Claus because I got an asthma attack while in bed and saw all the adults in my family putting all the toys together. I was 7.
This is so easy. I could write a book. Love you Mom!! She's watching my son right now, actually. Irony?
During Lent, my Dziadzu (grandfather)used to go this small bar/eating place to get fish dinners for Fridays. My job was to be sent by my Babci (grandmother)to go get him. I was 11 or 12 at the time. I used to sit at the bar with him while we waited for the food.
ReplyDeleteNutty Flavor, I love your story. Ha!
ReplyDeleteActually, these are all pretty good. But spinach pie can be really tasty if done right.
oh and I have 2 sisters who are 13-15 years older than me and when they were kids they dressed up like hookers for Halloween and my parents thought it was funny and cute. According to them that was a popular costume for little girls in 1978--but I dont believe them ---can anyone back that claim up?
ReplyDelete@S Joy, very funny story about the eyebrows!
ReplyDeleteMy dad took my and my sister to see Dracula (with Frank Langella). Hate all scary movies but vampire movies. Anyhoo, my sister was sitting in between me and my Dad. At a particularly tense part of the film, my Dad reached over and poked me in the neck. The place was quiet and I screamed bloody murder. There were people behind us laughing so hard and then chuckling throughout the rest of the film. When I remind him of it, my Dad laughs and laughs...
ReplyDeleteI love my Dad.
My mother told me that she never loved me.
ReplyDeleteI had severe bulimia as a teen and broke down and told my Mom I needed help. She said only fat people needed help with eating disorders. I was bulimic for about 5 more years, until I moved away from home, upon which time the problem just went away on its own and has never come back.
ReplyDelete@VIP - My mom MADE me get a class ring. ;(
ReplyDeleteAlso, when I was first climbing the stairs she wanted to get a picture of it. She did, and as soon as it was snapped I fell down them. That's SO her. Hahaha
@Derek Harvey, my dad & stepmom let me dress up as a playboy bunny- this was the early 80's- I was 13.
ReplyDeleteThey also used to send me to the store for lottery tickets & cigarettes.
And yes, they took me to see Saturday Night Fever when I was 6.
I could go on & on....things they did back then would be considered child abuse/unfit parenthood today.
I used to buy smokes for my dad all the time when I was a kid! I vividly remember being six years old and buying them at the corner store. Eventually, I had to get my dad to call down there before I picked them up.
ReplyDeleteI remember being ticked off when I was around 10 because I couldn't pick up his cigarettes anymore because, you know, laws.
Ahhhhh, small towns.
when i was 13, my dad, against good judgement and official government weather center warnings, took me to a movie i'd been harping on and on and on (and on!) about--in the middle of an impending cat. 3 hurricane, w/ extreme rising water on the roadways. we had a great time though, despite being shut in with a theater-full of fellow movie-goers until the next morning. to this day it goes down in family history as one of my favorite days ever. #daddysgirl
ReplyDeleteMy parents took us to the bar all the time when we were kids. We drank RC Cola & ate snacks, played the jukebox, and pool. They left us home a lot too, probably from about the ages of 9/10 years old. This was in a rural area, so no abundance of daycare or babysitters.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from my mother was convinced that straight hair was against nature, bad and had no body, so from the time I was in first grade until high school, she forced us (my sister and me)to get perms. I haven't had a perm since I was 18, no child should be forced to have tight curls and a bad chemical smell radiating though the atmosphere at such a young age.
"OUTTA THE MOUTH OF BABES"
ReplyDeleteAs a young parent I made poor choices when it came to letting my daughter watch movies with me. When she was 7 I had KINGPIN on and his Landlady in the movie did the ole "peace sign over the mouth-tongue sticking through" act...well my daughter mimicked that and asked me what it meant! Obviously, I couldn't tell her the truth! So,I basically pleaded with her not to imitate it, especially at school!
My mom hit me with the car on purpose. I was walking in front of it and she thought it would be funny to scare me, so she hit the gas and rammed into me, a ten year old. She claims she didn't mean to hit me as hard as she did, but she doesn't like me so no one believed her.
ReplyDeleteOmggg
DeleteThe summer of '74 I was 7 years old & we had moved across the state so my mom could escape an extremely abusive relationship. It was a hot summer night & I had fallen asleep on the couch. At some point in the wee hours there was a lot of banging on the door so I answered it. There was my mom police officers on either side holding her up. They said "is this your mother?" I said yes, so they set her inside. She was so drunk she couldn't walk or form a coherent sentence. I helped clean her up & put her to bed. Ahhhh, the 70s....a magical time when cops would hand messed up parents over to kids & not call CPS!
ReplyDeleteNot my parents or me, but one time I was out at the bar and saw a little kid sleeping on the floor below the dart board. I was pretty loud and obnoxious when I said to a friend, "Holy shit! Some piece of garbage has their kid sleeping on the floor of a bar!" Then I did a stealth scan around the bar and saw one mid 40's couple look over at me.
ReplyDeleteI walked back to the pool table, keeping them in the corner of my eye. They went around and talked to a couple different people and pointing at me. I don't know if they were telling people why they were leaving or trying to get someone to help the dude kick my ass, but I shuffled a couple empty bottles to within reach and kept a cue stick in my hand. 10 minutes late they picked up their kid and left.
My mom was extremely religious and thought she talked to god. I was afraid of the dark growing up because my mom said she used to see demons and spirits and we could hear her telling them in the middle of the night to get out in the name of Jesus. Scared the shit out of us kids and I didn't realize until later that she was NUTS. I'm sure she passed her crazy gene to me. To be fair, she had a really rough, abusive childhood and probably needed to disassociate to survive.
ReplyDeleteAre you me?
Deletehmmm.
ReplyDeletemy parents are hippies, so me & my brother had an awsum childhood.
one thing my mom did that pissed me off was put soap in my mouth & made me chase it w/ milk when i was 5.
thats it.
Baby Nom rolled off my bed yesterday. We were cuddling and the next thing I knew, his feet were disappearing over the edge of the bed and I heard a thud. He stretched, his head was already on the edge of the bed and gravity just pulled him over.
ReplyDeleteTerr.i.fy.ing.
And man, the breaths he was drawing to get those ear-piercing wails out. It was five seconds of screaming followed by ten seconds of drawing as big a breath as possible (you know it's gonna be an intense cry with those big silences in between). No real damage, though. He half-landed on a laundry basket full of clean stuff so he was mostly just scared.
My mom NEVER had the talk with me! When I was 8 I showed Chauncey my wondersnatch and he showed me his weird vienna sausage and I thought we had sex. I came home and asked my mom what happens when girls have sex too young...and she said "well... they either get pregnant or become hoes or both"
ReplyDeleteOn top of that Chauncey and I got into a fight on the playground because I thought he needed to do right by me and he was just showing his sauadge to all the other girls in class...so it was a very emotional time for me. I remember praying over the next 2-3 years for God to forgive me for having sex and to not let me be pregnant or turn into a hoe!
It wasn't until I had Sex Ed in the 6th grade that I learned that Chauncey's vienna sausage had not been inserted into my wondersnatch, therefore I was still a virgin, not a hoe, and clearly not expecting....WHEW!
The mind of a child....
My mom drew a diagram on a napkin of the inside of the female body to explain to me how my period would work while sitting at a concession stand at the flea market. I wanted the earth to swallow me up.
ReplyDeleteNowadays you aren't allowed to leave your children unsupervised until they are 12, but back in the day (the day being 1994 or so), I started babysitting when I was 9. There were a bunch of families with young kids in our neighborhood, and the only kid who was of age to be a babysitter was my 11 year old sister, so if she wasn't available, I was the next option. Granted, I was a pretty responsible 9 y/o (I'm not saying that the kids were always in bed exactly on time, but I was definitely with it enough to keep them alive & fed). Nowadays though, when I tell people that story, they act like it's crazy though (which I guess it is, when I have kids, I can't see myself leaving them with a 9 year old)
ReplyDeleteMy dad used me as a narc. He was an investigative reporter and used me to buy a "cocaine kit" (small mirror and straw) at a local head shop as part of a story on head shops selling drug paraphernalia to kids. One of my stoner friends was the clerk who sold it to me, and she got in a shitload of trouble.
ReplyDeleteThe bizarre thing was, me an all my stoner friends knew that my dad smoked weed. The could have totally narc'd him out, but they didn't.
My dad used to send me on my bike w/a note to the corner store authorizing me to buy beer and cigarettes. He was winning at life!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and my mother, being a Marxist social worker, decided it would be a good idea to explain the birds and the bees to me...when I was six years old.
ReplyDeleteThese are quite comical. Kids these days are just wimpy. They need some fine parenting like we all had.
ReplyDeleteFew stories to tell, my parents allowed my sister to watch me and my brother, she was 13. She decided to take the car for a joy ride AND to stop and get cigarettes with both my brother and I sitting in the front seat. No seatbelt of course. I just remember her repeating over and over, "don't tell mom".
My uncle would also give me a half of beer every time I would sleep over at his house to get me to go to sleep. I was 5!
My mom used to lock my brother, sister and I out of the house most afternoons in the summer. I have asthma. Talk about scary. If we wanted a drink of water, we had to use the hose. She'd let us back in the house before my dad came home from work. One day, I told my dad about it. The door stayed unlocked from then on.
ReplyDeleteMy brother and sister always got birthday presents, but I had a few birthdays where I didn't get any presents because my mom said that the meds and the allergy shots I got WERE my presents. Sucked.
My senior prom dress for the only dance I ever went to, was made by my mom. My sister got to buy her dress the next year ('78), and got a new winter coat, a new wardrobe, and got braces. I went without a winter coat my senior year (grew out of my old one), and still suffer from bad teeth from not having braces as a kid. My brother bought me a coat for Christmas that year. Thirty-seven years later, and I still have it. Best Christmas present ever!
God Bless you
DeleteMy mom used to lock my brother, sister and I out of the house most afternoons in the summer. I have asthma. Talk about scary. If we wanted a drink of water, we had to use the hose. She'd let us back in the house before my dad came home from work. One day, I told my dad about it. The door stayed unlocked from then on.
ReplyDeleteMy brother and sister always got birthday presents, but I had a few birthdays where I didn't get any presents because my mom said that the meds and the allergy shots I got WERE my presents. Sucked.
My senior prom dress for the only dance I ever went to, was made by my mom. My sister got to buy her dress the next year ('78), and got a new winter coat, a new wardrobe, and got braces. I went without a winter coat my senior year (grew out of my old one), and still suffer from bad teeth from not having braces as a kid. My brother bought me a coat for Christmas that year. Thirty-seven years later, and I still have it. Best Christmas present ever!
OMG… These stories are GREAT! There should be a website dedicated to just this! God I miss the 60's and 70's!!
ReplyDeleteThese Mte great! Cept for the sad ones.
ReplyDeleteWhen my brother and suster and I were little we'd always get in trouble on ling car rides. My dad would pukl over and make us line up for the belt. This was the Seventies. And he really is a great guy.
Your stories are appalling! Makes my story about my Mom forcing me to eat scrambled eggs on weekends so minor! I tried hiding them under napkins and tossing them but she always caught me. As an adult I learned that there are other ways to make eggs that are delicious. I still razz her about this.
ReplyDeleteMy mother kept her speed pills in the same jar as her ibuprofen. The pills were coincidentally small and red, same as the medicine. In 7th grade I got in her purse and took two, thinking they'd relieve my adolescent period cramps. I had no idea at the time what speed was, or that my mom took it. By the time I got to first period in school I had a full blown panic attack - I think Red Dawn was a popular movie around that time , and I was convinced the Russians were a) coming and b) going to come crashing through my school windows . I got sent to the office and the first thing the school nurse asked was what was I on. My mother was livid and insisted I took the drugs on purpose and how dare I humiliate her like that. The funny part is, I was part of the " Just Say No " generation , so drugs really scared the crap out of me. I never tried anything until I was 22, my roommates were strippers and I was introduced to cocaine for the first time. ( which I hated ) - to this day my mother still believes I knew what I was doing with those pills. And to this day I always swear I will never be that kind of mom:
ReplyDeleteMy Dad every Sunday used to go out and get a huge variety of two dozen fresh donuts; it was his job to watch the three kids and let Mom sleep in that morning. That is an awful lot of sugar for three little kids, and we not only were wired but I now cannot eat a donut because I just overdosed on them, period. The really shocking thing is that only in the past year or so did we learn that Mom never had a clue that he was feeding us pure sugar. I have no idea how he hid it and certainly didn't realize he was even trying to -- we kids just thought it was our Sunday a.m. routine.
ReplyDeleteAt 12 my mom had me by the Playboy issue with Jimmy Carter interviewed. I told the clerk and he just laughed and sold it to me. If I was smarter I coud have used that excuse at other stores and then sold the mags to my friends with a good profit added on.
ReplyDeleteI think my dad secretly wamted me to have an accident because he let me drive and take our race boat out alone when I wax 13. I remember cruising by the lake house going about 40mph and my dad signalling to floor it.
My Dad used to go waterskiing with 6 year old me on his shoulders or back, but at least I was wearing a life jacket. I remember being both thrilled and terrified all at once. But I did grow up afraid to try waterskiing. Sometimes he would also be smoking a cig at the same time while holding the rope in the other hand while I hung on for dear life. He also gave me coca cola to drink on the nights my mom worked her evening shift AND put it in my soccer thermos before dropping me at games. I was shocked and embarrassed when I found out that wasn't normal. He always meant well and he still cracks me up.
ReplyDeleteOn November 21, 1980 at the ripe old age of 9½ my parents had enough of my complaining about reoccurring stomach pain. After numerous trips to the doctor, he chalked it up to "growing pains" and my parents sent me to school feeling awful. Needless to say, it wasn't growing pains as during roll call my appendix burst! Not aware of what had happened (I passed out), I awoke in a hospital room, picked up the phone and called home. First question out of my mouth was not, "what happened to me?", but "who shot J.R.?"
ReplyDeleteNot sure which is worse, not believing me about feeling ill or the fact that they let me watch Dallas with them and my grandparents every Friday night!!!
I lived with my grandparents, both drunks. As a result, Christmas presents were usually handed over on Christmas morning, still in the Kmart bag. This one particular Christmas, grandma handed over the most hideous hat ever, which no self respecting 12 year old would be caught dead in. It was white, plush fur and shaped like the bishop on a chess board. My dismay must have shown on my face. When I tried it on, to my great relief, it was much too small. My grandmother, noting my relief, screamed at me that I obviously hated the hat and was deliberately making my head too big.
ReplyDeleteI learned how to make a gin martini before I was 10.
ReplyDeleteI had my first contact high before I could make a gin martini.
My grandmother used to serve my brother and I watered down Coors in dixie cups.
My mom learned to smoke because my grandma had her light her cigarettes for her.
I can remember being behind the bar at a bowling alley before I was 8.
Parenting fail for my own kids: I had been home from having my second child via c-section. My ex husband thought it would be fun to have our son, who was a year and a half old at the time, help him sweep the kitchen. My ex looked away for a moment and my son fell down the basement stairs. He bounced off the concrete floor on his head.
Mind you, I was in bed recovering from a c-section with a newborn to nurse. I had to stay up with my son to make sure he didn't have a concussion. He survived the night and is a brilliant and wonderful teenager.
The one tiny bonus I received was by having to stay up all night long, I was able to watch the 2000 presidential election results change from Al Gore being the winner to George Bush. Oh, and my ex will always be a worse parent than me. :p
After my mom died I was my brother's keeper. My dad didn't have a clue, I was eight, my brother was four. Dad did hire a housekeeper, who stole my mother's jewelry and slept with my dad.
ReplyDeleteHe remarried briefly, she came with two kids. They got new wardrobes for the start of school. My brother and I got new underwear. My dad didn't notice.
From age ten to twelve I was the sole caretaker for my brother. My dad went to school during the day and worked nights. We survived, barely.
When dad married again we went to CA for a vacation. Dad and new mom slept in the small trailer we were pulling. My brother and I slept in the car. A cop woke me and scared me to death tapping on the window with his flashlight. He woke up my dad and read him the riot act for leaving us kids in the car alone. After he left, we were back in the car alone.
My childhood was only good up to the age of eight.
Oh, the old days! Nobody though anything about putting kids in the car with no seatbelts, and when we were little my sister and I thought it was fun to ride with my dad to the liquor store (drive through!) where the man that owned it would give is candy and Dad would smoke on top of us. Everybody in my family was mystified that my sister had allergies! :/ And I I'm not mistaken, there was a gun under the seat that would roll out every once in awhile! Lord, how did we make it?
ReplyDeleteMy parents were pretty strict, but they let me watch "Watership Down" once, late at night. I was 8. I had nightmares for weeks.
ReplyDeleteOh, and they let me sip from the adults' alcoholic beverages at the holiday dinner table. Horrifying (lol), but I hardly ever drank as an adult.
ReplyDeleteI've got about a million stories about my mother from her granola-freak phase in the 70's. Like the time she served up fried chicken breaded with wheat germ 'cuz she thought it would be healthier. Or the carob birthday cake that looked and tasted like compressed coffee grounds.
ReplyDeleteShe used to drag me to all these granola-freak expositions. I still remember the pyramid power nutballs walking around with pyramids on their heads. I was the only kid in junior high with a copy of the Communist Manifesto in his locker. Ah the 70's....
My kids were my companions..because I couldn't find anyone that loved the movies as much as i did.
ReplyDeleteMy husband not big on movies. Friends liked girly movies.
I scarred my kids for life by taking them to see The Sixth Sense and Kill Bill I cannot believe I took them to see that shit!!!!
Oh, the drinking and driving stories? My cuz and I used to visit his family in Wasilla, AK during the summer. Yes, that Wasilla, at the same time that little Sarah Palin was growing up there. He would take us into Palmer to get beer at the drive-through liquor store, and down half a six on the way home. Once we were out of town he'd put me or my cuz on his lap and let us steer the car. At night, on deserted gravel roads in the Alaskan outback, barreling around blind corners often blocked by moose. He was a great old cuss though.
ReplyDeleteInappropriate movies at a young age (Stripes and Animal House)? Check.
ReplyDeleteSent to the store to buy cigarettes? Check.
Taught how to tend bar and worked behind the bar before I was tall enough to see over it? Check.
Dad drove around drunk with all of us "flipping" from the back seat to the back back of the station wagon? Check.
Add to that my grandmother used to give us magic markers and have us color bathing suits on all the naked ladies in my dad's playboy and penthouse magazines. Growing up in the 70's was the best!
Sorry for those of you with the sad stories.
This was back in 1980, so I was 4 and vividly remember it. My Dad and I had gone to the store to get something and then he stopped in the convenience store to get gas, gigs and a couple of comic books for me (I've been reading actual books since I was 3). Anyway I stayed in the car and told him to get me Spider-Man, Green Lantern and Batman comics. He pumped the gas and left the car running when he went in.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was curious and got into the driver seat and put the car in drive. Luckily he was just coming out of the store when he saw the car about to go into the road and was able to jump in and put the breaks on before I went over to the other side of the road and run into a building.
After he calmed down (he wasn't mad at me, he realized it was his fault) I cracked him up by saying "You bent my Batman book!"
Oh yeah, learning to drive. My dad used to let me start up our old van when I was 14. You had to really work the choke to get it running and warm. One day he says, "Go ahead and back it out." Of course, with the choke out it was idling at about 2K RPMs. I dropped the clutch, did a quick 180 backwards out of the driveway and rammed right into the neighbor's car parked in front of our house.
ReplyDeleteMy high school driving instructor used to wonder why I was always so nervous. "I've already been in a frickin' traffic accident behind the wheel, ok?"
Jesus I could fill a book with stories. For the sake of brevity, let's keep it simple.
ReplyDeleteI was a teen. My mother hated my favorite pair of Levi's 501s, so she got those iron-on letters and ironed on the words KICK HERE on the ass of my best jeans.
I didn't have a childhood, my parents stole it from me. But, I discovered it when I became a grandparent. Childhood is a joy and wonderful journey.
ReplyDeleteMy dad gave me us cigarettes when we were like 3 or 4....
ReplyDeletetook us to see the godfather when it came out - never recovered from the cut off horse's head
Parents took me to see the original Jaws when it first came out. I was 6 years old!!!
ReplyDeleteMy mom was also the granola hippie type, B. She was forever remaking things over with whole wheat flour; just for the record angel food cake and egg rolls are no bueno with ww flour. I think the think I hated most as a kid is the thing I appreciate most now: no tv. None at all until I was 13. She shoulda explained to us about the whole "not real" thing, though, I saw a horror movie at a babysitters house at 6 that I can still remember, frame for frame.
ReplyDeleteSome of these are so sad, I hope everything is better now, y'all
My sisters and brother and I got to ride on the top of our red station wagon with the wood paneling.
ReplyDeleteI watched horror movies at my sister's slumber parties when I was younger than 10 years old. I love scary movies now! I wasn't scared then and they don't scare me now. I'm one tough mutha and I guess my mom knew it because she didn't even try to make me go to bed during those parties.
Parenting fail: they kept the broken metal climbing structure under the monkey bars. I fell on it and broke my arm. It looked like a U shaped arm!
Some of these are quite sad and I also hope everyone is okay now and time and space help. xoxo
I had a harsh rearing with daily abuse, so I will tell a funny (not downer) one - I helped to transfer bootlegged tobacco and liquor during my newspaper route for my parents. Nobody suspected the sweet paper delivery kid.
ReplyDelete(But I wasn't allowed to use the oven) lol
My mom took me to a Vegas casino when I was 20. I was nervous, but my mom told me to shit up and play blackjack next to her. Ironically, another girl at my table was carded, but they never asked me my age. On that trip, my mom also urged me to order whiskey sours at the bar. I still drink whiskey sours whenever I am missing her.
ReplyDeleteDad let me sip on his Baileys every Friday (it was his end of week unwind drink). It worked - alcohol was never a big deal for me, so I never did the high school party get stupid drunk thing. I've carried on the tradition with my niece and nephew, letting them take a sip when I order a drink.
Ah, good times @sea
ReplyDeleteI played the slots with my parents in Reno when I was 18 and up. Lol
Also played the tables with my older boyfriend at 15 nd up. Oops
ReplyDeleteNever ever wore seat belts never got questioned where I was until mom read my diary that I drank a sloe gin fizz and put me on restriction...got the talk by dad when I was 20...a little late! After raising 6 kids I think my mom was just tired by my time and didn't bother me too much...oh and always late picking me up...I was always the last kid at ballet, school trips whatever...to this day I'm always early picking up my kids
ReplyDeletemy mom left me in the care of my alcoholic father when i was like 2 and he passed out and someone found me wandering around in a busy street. thanks mom
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, my dad would take me to the local bars where he would buy a quart of beer in a cardboard container. He would also let me drive the car with me in his lap, and I've slept on the back window ledge of an old chevy many a time when I was little.
ReplyDeleteMy hubby's parenting fails: When our kids were 4 & 2 (girl and boy) he was up in the attic. Of course they wanted to come up and he yelled "Don't come up here". They did. He then said "Well, you can stay up here but don't MOVE" Hah. Try telling THAT to my son (who was then 2) next thing you know, he hears my daughter gasp, and he looks up to see Ben disappear somewhere in the woodwork...he had stepped off the floor and fallen through the insulation by the stairway ceiling...there were nails sticking out of the wood, and the kid escaped without a scratch. Hubby thrust his hand down the hole, felt around and hauled my son up by the arm...Of course, I didn't hear about this til about 4 years AFTER the fact. I also didn't hear about how my son almost went for a solo subway ride en route to the T'giving day parade in NYC in the company of his daddy and his two uncles...hubby snatched him from the subway just as the doors were starting to close...Thank god now he's 19, he's turned out just fine, and is a great kid, unscathed from his youth with the exception of a few scars from ER visits, and 1 from where mom steristripped him (I'm a nurse) because she thought he had filled his quote of ER visits that year, and they might think we were abusing him....;-)
When I was a teenager, I was on a TV quiz show, and the day before filming, my mom served us frozen chicken parm for dinner. After we'd eaten it, she realized it was three days expired, so she started panicking and freaking out that I'd get food poisoning while on TV. She made me go into the bathroom and make myself throw up to prevent me from getting food poisoning.
ReplyDeleteAfter an hour of trying, I learned that I do not have a gag reflex. Also, I didn't get food poisoning, and I won the show.
My mom was a pretty good parent, but my dad was a drunk. Most of the times I remember him growing up, he was either sleeping or partying or mad because wasn't sleeping or partying. He didn't start growing out of that until he was 35, when my sister and I were nearly adults.
ReplyDeleteI am not the best parent in the world, either, but I am lucky my daughter seems to be turning out okay. I just can't think of any stories that don't make me feel sad or ashamed.
since i can't come up w/ a "parenting fail",
ReplyDeletei have a parent gold moment from my dad.
i was like 7 or 8, & we went bowling. this was like '91 or '92.
& we were about to leave, & my dad had to take a piss, so he gave me a quater to play the arcade.
these fukn like 16yr old cunts, roll up on me, & get in my face, saying i "looked" @ them wrong.
i'm young, get scared, & start crying my eyes out.
my dad comes out, asks wats going on, i tell him wat happened.
he spots the girls running into a dudes car.
my dad goes to the car, rips open the driver door, of sum fukn random dudes car & says...
"u wanna fuck w/ my daughter & make her cry?!
u fukn' deal w/ me!"
my parents are rad.
Hmmm, my childhood wasn't horrendous but not particularly happy. My father was a mean dick, I told him I wanted the Barbie pool house for Christmas and he said we couldn't afford it but then bought it for my cousin. My parents used to make me give up the few toys I had if one of my cousin's wanted/liked it. I was the youngest of four kids and my mom would leave all of us in the car while she grocery shopped. My oldest brother couldn't have been more than 10. My oldest bro also acted out in a mean way to me and made me watch The Shining when I was 4. FOUR! *Shudder* He's done some really nice things for me along the years, but I still half expect him to torture me in some way since he totally gets off being mean.
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling a lot better about my own parenting now. LOL I yell a lot, which I hate. But my mom yelled AND hit, so hopefully my kids will be better than me.
ReplyDeleteHere is a funny short video on the topic of parenting fails --
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JGadWqh-U
my mum loved horror movies... made me watch the exorcist with her... I was 7 - did not sleep for months!!
ReplyDeleteSeeing all the drinking ones made me remember a hilarious thing that happened on Christmas Eve of 1987 (I remember because my bro was 2 when he did it).
ReplyDeleteOk, we're Catholic so like 98% of Catholics at Christmas my Grandma always had Crown Royal and Cokes for the adults. It was just sitting on the "adults" table (remember when people had adults and kiddie tables for get togethers?) anyway, all her kids and grandkids are there. My brother is the youngest of the grandkids by 7 years. So he had watched all the adults make drinks and his cousins and brother sneak and make them the entire night. He walks over to the table, pulls out a chair, climbs onto the table, grabs a plastic cup then proceeds to pour himself a Crown and Coke.
At age 2.
I forgot who took it away from him, but my Uncle (who I would one day play golf with alongside Alice Cooper) was a bit of a drinker then, took the cup, drank it down in one swallow and then said, "Not bad. JonJon (our nicname for my bro at that age) you can make me another one in a bit".
God I miss those holidays at my Grandma's house. Aging sucks. It's not fair we get to enjoy part of our lives and then live in fear that it's all going to end because people get old and die.
My parents were big stoners & smoked weed daily. They let me get the rolling tray from under the couch & help them roll their joints. I was 5-6. They paid my 16 yr old babysitter in MJ. Then when I was 13, Mom took me to my first bar & let me drink. I got wasted on Lone Star beer. I threw up everywhere that night, all over my bed & room & she told me I had to clean it up, that was my payback for getting drunk. Thanks, Mom.
ReplyDeleteI think I mentioned my parents were hippies? Also partiers. They tell me that when I was two, I woke up, walked into the party room, grabbed a tall glass full of vodka, drank it straight up and then toddled back to bed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, during one if those parties they found strangers having sex on top of a pile of coats, and me, under the coats.