I really couldn’t be farther apart from either parent.
My biological father: alcoholic rapist, allergic to accountability. Pretty smart but not intellectually curious. We have very little in common to the extent that I have almost no feelings for him. I think it’s been ten years at least since we’ve talked.
My mother: narcissistic, violent, unable to regulate her emotions, but even if you subtracted the mental illness, we are into totally different things. She has an engineering degree and I’m a writer. She once asked me the point of writing about things that didn’t happen. She has very low empathy and self-insight, in contrast I’m extremely self-aware and empathetic.
My mother had more positive qualities too, but they weren’t qualities we really shared.
I saw a lot of my parents’ problems stemming from a refusal to take accountability and I intentionally decided to not be like them.
The relative I am most like is my Aunt - my mother’s sister. We have some differing interests but functionally the same personality: friendly, blunt and dark-humored. Both of us have ADHD and some spectrumy elements. Whenever people ask me what my Aunt is like, my husband tells them: “Just imagine an extroverted Spice Weasel.”
Since I had her guidance growing up I got a solid example of how not to be my parents. Love that woman.
I marked 4 for my father, but I may have made a mistake, while we were not exactly the same my father and I were so similar that to this day I can explain to my sisters the exact thought process behind any action my father took since before we were born.
In fact since my father died in '22 I’ve not spoken with anybody who understands me at such a basic level, I miss him very much.
I love my mother, and she is way nicer in many ways than my father, but while I have many traits that I got from her it’s not even close to the way I’m in many ways a copy of my dad.
For my husband’s parents, his Dad always said he got the best of each of them, and it’s true. They are deeply flawed people but somehow managed to pass on their best traits while not passing on the worst ones.
I’m pretty nice to (most) people, the way my father is, but I tend to be unyielding-ruthless about particular principles the way my mother is.
Growing up, hearing my parents quarrel, it was always frustrating because I knew exactly 100% what both of them were arguing but each of them only understood their 50%. I understood why father was mad with mother, and why mother was mad with father, but neither got the other. That’s the issue with inheriting both of their minds.
Here’s a quote from a debate in the Australian parliament published 1905:
Mr. Batchelor.-- The honorable member said that the gloves were off.
Mr. Knox.-- Even when the gloves are off, the contestants are sometimes called out of the ring in order that they may refresh themselves…
Here’s a quote from a 1913 book, The Tragic Story of the Waihi Strike about a miners’ strike:
You want a fight! Well, we are going to make it a bitter one, and bitter to the end. The gloves are off, and it is going to be a knuckle fight.
Anyhow, after last night, the gloves are off! It’s bare knuckles now.
It seems clear to me that these quotes are using “gloves” as a metaphor referring to boxing. Especially since dedicated hockey gloves apparently didn’t appear until the early 1900s, and the “knuckle” references don’t make sense if the glove in question were a symbolic challenge to a duel.
I think I’m very like each of my parents in some ways, and very unlike each of them in some other ways, and I don’t want to try to balance it out to come up with some sort of overall number score. Didn’t vote.
Agreed, and thank you for those. It’s also worth noting that boxing gloves were only made mandatory until the latter half of the 19th century, so “bare-knuckles” fighting was still often the norm until not too long before those cites.
I put a 3 for how much I take after both of my parents; as I think about it, I’m really a blend of them.
I resemble my father facially, and I have his genetic gift of hair that hasn’t even started to gray yet (I’m almost 61 now). My wife tells me that my manner of speaking is a lot like his, and I also got his talent for marketing work and interest in sports. On the downside, I think I also inherited his impatience.
My mother gave me her sense of humor (though mine blends in some of dad’s humor, too), her imagination and artistic side, and her love of music. I also got the receding hairline which comes from her father.
From them both, I got a love of reading, a sense of kindness, a liberal political leaning, and a generous nature.
IT WAS. And reportedly the BBC bleeped out other slurs and outbursts, including a homophobic one aimed at host Alan Cumming. Which supports your next point…
Davidson wasn’t up for an award himself; the film about his life and the actor who played him (Robert Aramayo) were up for several. And the BAFTAs do usually get a lot of coverage on the news, especially the film ones.
But the signs do point to wanting the controversy. The question is why. And I have no idea.
Everyone (well, mostly my husband) reels me how much i am like my father. So i picked 4. I’m not as similar as frodo is to his father. I failed to get his athleticism, sadly.
I picked 3 from my mom, because I’m not as much like her as like my dad, but I got a lot from her, too.
That has also crossed my mind. We also may not be eligible in and of ourselves because our income is too high. On paper, we look upper middle class. But the reality of our financial situation is not what you would expect due mostly to our exhorbitant medical expenses. I’m not sure if the process is a simple income check or more nuanced than that. There are a lot of things to consider here.
