My father was mostly great, except that - for some reason - he seemed to be mentally or emotionally stuck at the maturity of maybe a 20 year old and never advanced beyond that. He had a very good temper, though; I’ve seen him get angry maybe less than ten times over the course of nearly 40 years. He was also highly responsible/detail-oriented and almost always on top of things. My ADHD brain wishes I could have half of his organization-ness.
My mother was pretty awful - deluded, irrational, hot-tempered, profligate with spending, conspiracy-theory-ish, arrogant, etc. She would pick strange hills to die on and get mad about them (for instance, getting angry if I said that “airline” means the transport company while “airliner” means the jets that the company operates - she’d be mad, “No, the two words mean the same thing!”) I knew from a very young age I did not like her and preferred not to be around her.
I gave both my parents a 4 – for me. I think both my sisters would have rated them differently; and I’m sure my elder sister would have rated them both much lower. They mostly gave me what I needed, or at least tried to; it wasn’t, unfortunately, at all what she needed. The intervening 10 years may have had something to do with it; but I think it was much more that we’re very different people.
The choices offered in the parenting quality poll (1-5, plus several toss away non-answers) were regrettably limited and drastically impaired how accurately I could answer. If there was a possible +5, there also needed to be a possible -5. What was offered was “passable” (1) to “great!” (5).
What a sanitizing fiction!
So those of us who had abusive, neglectful, abandoning, cruel, traumatizing parents either had to minimize that (1) or give a different kind of minimizing non-answer. Yet another serving of “I don’t believe you’ or “no matter what you say, don’t insist on telling me anything that makes me uncomfortable’.
I always say “I should have killed my father while I was still a child (the means were readily available to me), I’d be out of prison by now”. Instead I’m still in a prison of trauma, depression, woundedness, cPTSD 60 years later and he got away with it all. Where’s the voting choice for that?
I mostly grew up with my stepfather, not father, and I gave him a very lenient 2 when I feel like 1.5 was more realistic. Drunk, angry, weepy, drunk, but at least with some good moments in between.
Mom dealt with a lot (some of her own creation), but I was a really problematic kid, so full credit for her patience…4.5 becomes a 5.
There is no “magic” number of options, alas; if I put in too many someone will complain about that. I did give fractions in my post above tho note-as always the polls are intended to spark discussion not be end-alls on their own.
Eh, right before answering that poll, i had watched an April fools day post by a YouTuber i follow. (Yes, it was early.) I thoroughly enjoyed it. He made that video to entertain his fan base.
Good April fools day pranks are enjoyed by the recipient, not just the perpetrator.
Has nothing to do with “accepting compliments” (or criticism)-there is no One Perfect Way to do these things, and I have traditionally used zero for situations which are off the scale (as was the case here, for those who had no parent). If you want to do your own polls, then make your own scale if you like, whatever.
My father was great, but my mother was super. I guess i knocked my dad down to a 4 because my mom spent so much more time parenting and did such a great job. But reading other people’s comments, i should probably bump him up to a 5, too.
An April Fools’ joke which is both harmless and also funny to everyone involved is just fine. One which is technically harmless but played on people who hate such things, or hate the specific version, is not fine. One which is harmful is worse.
I’m not sure whether I’ve ever been at a ribbon-cutting etc. I’m pretty sure I never participated in one as part of the cutting crew, but not sure that I’ve never been in the audience.
When I was in elementary school my whole class (it may have been the whole school, actually) went outside to attend the ground breaking ceremony for the new gym the school was building, on a spot that was a parking lot at the time. Based on the name I thought we were going to get to see a bulldozer tear up the parking lot. What they actually did was pretty boring.
I attended the ground breaking ceremony of the Castro Valley BART (commuter train) station. I think this was in 1994. (The station opened in 1997.) What I remember most was that California governor Pete Wilson was there, and that he looked a lot shorter in real life than on TV.
I don’t think this counts for the ground-breaking, but it’s adjacent. A few years back they refurbished a local building which had a lead-sealed time capsule that was taken out as part of the renovation. My Father in Law was one of the blacksmiths they had help open and re-seal the capsule, which they then replaced in the building. So I got to see first hand what was inside and am privy to what he snuck in along with all the “planned” stuff.