Kbean, I submit that your parents aren’t preparing you to be responsible for yourself if they don’t let you do anything without supervision. They are supposed to guide you, not bend you to their will.
So one night (I think it was a new moon or something) I’m in my room doing a short ritual. I had mixed some loose herbs for incense, including mugwort, and I left it burning after I was done.
A little while later, I hear my mom come down the hall. She pauses, then knocks on my door.
“Come in!” say I.
Mother leans in
sniff sniff sniff … sniff sniff
“Mom, it’s not pot!!”
racinchikki and dragonblink- I have both of your problems as well. Inscense, lighters, various herbs, including Siva makes for suspicious parents. Thankfully, neither of my parents know what Siva is 
LC
The first Paranoid Parent story that popped into my mind reading this Thread is:
I am maybe 15. Youngest of five. Only girl. I have a widowed mother. I didn’t smoke (dad died of cancer), drinking never appealed to me and oy! what I would have done for a boy friend, this nice quiet catholic goirl woulda died fer a boyfriend.
My mattress on my bed is possibly from before WW2, as it was my grandparents and nothing of mine is new. (Wah.)
After the seasonal flip and rotate of the mattress, the bottom side ripped open and, well, the innards of the mattress were pretty much disintigrated into dark smelly chunky dust.
I know that asking for a new mattress is futile because everything else I’ve ever asked for in my life (practical things and silly things) falls into the
“Will see about it” catagory. Which means “It ain’t gonna happen.”
Being young, optismistic and wide eyed, I asked anyway, explaining my mattress was kaput. I was informed that we could not afford a new mattress, no how, no way. ( Actually we could) but just duct tape it up, we are not made of money.
Some time later ( months, years, its a blur now) the room takes on a smell of its own. Musty. As any teenager, I live in my room. I have Bo Duke’s poster on my wall…sigh.
My mom pops her head in one day to ask me something then disappears. I return to reading my book. The door flies open and my mom asks in her THEE-WILL-NOT-LIE-TO-ME-TONE-OR-FACE-THE-WRATH-OF-MOM
“Are you smoking pot?”
My response was to burst out laughing, doubling over onto my blue shag carpet. Me, smoke pot? I nearly vomit at the smell of cigerette smoke. Besides, I was (politically incorrect ethnic slur alert) very jewish with my cash then. I was soooo cheap that I would tape the records that my friends bought so I wouldn’t spend the $7.99-$10 for the great sounds of Kajagoogoo or Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Me, smoke pot. How insulting. (Though I did have thing for 45’s then.)
When I regain my ability to speak, I show her the mattress tear, the chunks of mattress innard dust and WA LA! within a short time I get a new non smelly mattress.
Since this isn’t too far off the mark, I thought I would share a **Weird But True Parental Story **
When I got my liscense at 16, my greatest joy in the world was to drive over to my cousins’ house, which was about 8 or 9 miles away.
If I was driving home at night my mom was worried that some man would grab me out of my car and ravish me.
Never mind the fact that I always locked my doors and my windows are always rolled up ( I don’t like wind in my ears.)
Apparently I was so appealing to Perverts in the Dark that they would want to smash through a window of my car at a stop light and be dragged physically out of my car. Yet, by day, I couldn’t get any boy in my school to notice me. Clearly, I was much better looking in the dark.
(We don’t exactly live in Harlem-Watts-Miami-Whatever)
So, she comes up with the ingenius idea.
She takes a couch pillow, dresses it up in a fedora, spring breaker old man coat (clothes courtesy of my 85 year old grandfather who was not a part of this farce.)and straps it into the front passenger seat. “This will fool *them * and think you are driving a man around.”
A couch pillow protecting me from perverts. You can’t make stuff up like this. I always figured that any pervert bad guy, after he smashed in my window, would look at the flat “face” of the pillow and just burst out laughing, then I could run him over with my 1981 Phoenix and rush home and beg my mother for forgiveness for ever doubting her.
Naturally, when I was out of sight of the house, Fred ( as I named the couch cushion) would be delegated to the back seat.
My friends, all whom had older odd-bird parents, accepted Fred with out too much teasing, because frankly, they could not bite the hand of the person that drove them everywhere.
My cousins, however, *tortured * me about Fred for years. ( They still do.)
Make vague comments about being gay- that should get your parents to encourage you to hang out with boys.
Though it could backfire…-
[hijack]
Mrblue - I suppose they are paranoid, I honestly am a really good kid (ok, with a mischevious streak but come on, who doesn’t?!). As for the college thing, I have talked to them about it before. They said that they will help me pay no matter where I go, in state or even if I choose to go to a university in Canada, which we would both love, considering the exchange rate and the different culture. After my brother and I move out (I’m 16, he’s 15), they have every intention of moving to Australia or New Zealand (I kid you not), so I think I will be ok after that. Hopefully they will not change their mind about things.
Big Daddy - I am the oldest of two, but only by a year. As for being prepared for being on my own…I have no clue, which is not good. I have some time to figure stuff out though, I hope…
Lucki Chaarms - Jailbreak dopefest sounds great! 
sturmhauke - I agree, but there’s not too much I can do as long as I am under their roof. 
Wonko - It just might work. Hell, even if it doesn’t, it would be quite funny to see their reactions upon thinking I am a lesbian [Note - I have nothing wrong with homosexuality, and neither do my parents as far as I know. Just didn’t want to offend anyone]. It’s not like they can punish me for it, and even if they wanted to, it’s not like they can do much more…
[/hijack]
Well, parents sometimes have a way of holding the fact that they still support you over your head. (I remember it well… and I’ve heard of much worse examples than what I experienced.) Don’t be too surprised if someday you hear something to the effect of “If you don’t stop seeing him, you’ll have to go it alone.”
I hate to sound pessimistic but can’t help it. Hopefully you’ll never have to worry about it.
Kbean, if you ever need advice once you are out in the world, you can always ask us Dopers. We’re only a little evil.
As has been noted before, most teenagers live in their rooms… me, too! I was (and still am!) a weirdo, kind of a loner, and spent all of my non-school hours in my room reading… this apparently worried Astromomma, because one day when she was putting some laundry in my room she stumbled across a Playboy that I had carelessly left unconcealed…
Her reaction: “Oh thank God! I thought he might be gay!”
If paranoia is justified, it isn’t paranoia.
Actual convo with my normally very tolerant, trusting, and common-sense-filled mom:
Mom: Are you playing D&D?
Theobroma (in college at the time)Some. Why?
Mom: Isn’t that dangerous?
Theobroma: ?? Only if you swallow the dice, or fall off a chair and hit your head. Why?
Mom: I saw something on TV about some kids in Minnesota that got lost or hurt playing it.
T: That was a hoax. From what I heard, one kid decided to take a trip and didn’t tell the others. D&D is basically as dangerous as “Monopoly.”
Mom:Oh. … Good. …
Wonko The Sane, I had over-protective parents too (although not as bad as Kbean’s, and I lived in a Muslim “fundamentalist” country!) and I tried that tactic. One day when my parents became particularly irate over some boy-related incident I told them I didn’t even care for boys that way. It actually worked; I was allowed to have boys in the house after that, although I still wasn’t allowed to be alone with them.
One caution - make sure not to implicate any female friends.
My parents weren’t particularly paranoid but one story does come to mind. My parents have shelves and shelves of books in our house, which were collected over the years and span a vast array of subject matter. I read the ones I liked so many times that I eventually had to move on to incredibly boring ones such as the Dictionary of Geographical Terms. One day, when I was about fourteen, my father noticed a collection of short stories by D. H. Lawrence lying in my room. Being too young to appreciate Lawrence’s subtleties I had found this book extremely boring. To my surprise, it was immediately confiscated. My parents never said a word about Judith Rossner, Henry Miller, and half a dozen other writers on the shelf who filled their books with explicit sex scenes.
Even though I understand Lawrence more now, I still can’t understand my parents’ way of thinking.