**Going on a family vacation, to a popular vacation spot, every year or so. **By “vacation,” I mean a trip of several days away from home with the purpose of having fun and doing things that you can’t accomplish simply by visiting friends or relatives (e.g. visiting Disneyland, camping in a national park, renting a place near the beach). When we kids were older, mom would take us skiing for a couple of days a year (at a nearby resort where we shared a place with relatives), but I only recall one actual vacation with both parents.
**Partying - as in gathering at someone’s home and drinking/getting high/getting laid - in high school. **I know it happened, but somehow I completely failed to partake of the party culture in high school. I asked an acquaintance what one had to do to go to one of these events, and she said, “Well, you just hear about it and show up.” I never heard about them in before the fact.
**Shaving one’s genitals as an aesthetic measure. ** I have been shaved this in relation to surgery, and I honestly cannot understand the appeal. It makes my parts look even less impressive than they do when they’re fully upholstered. Shaved genitals look biologically juvenile, and that squicks me out.
I think the appeal of having someone on retainer is misplaced anyway. When I first started my business I had lawyers on retainer… because they didn`t trust me to pay and it’s a common practice with law firms. Now that I’m established I have lawyers who do legal work for me and send me a bill, which I pay. I can’t imagine why anyone would WANT to pay a retainer. It’s not like paying a retainer is the only way to have an engagement agreement with a firm.
Incidentally, through having various complications in my life, I currently have five lawyers/firms who at least somewhat regularly do work for me (or my company). I would never say it seriously, but I do love jokingly telling people they should talk to one of my 5 lawyers.
Giant movie/music collections. The first one, I’ve directly known people who have book racks filled with DVDs. Personally, once I see a movie I’m usually done with it. I own a handful of favorites but do I really need a copy of Peggy Sue Got Married at arm’s reach in my home?
The second is more of an internet thing. I constantly hear people talk about how they have 2 terrabytes of music or something. I struggle to half fill my 8gb MP3 player. I don’t personally know anyone with this much music but I’ve seen plenty of people claim to have it and I doubt they’re all liars. I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with that much stuff (well, “listen to it” I guess). Hear one song and wait for it to come back up on shuffle in 2017?
Working in an office and the things that go with it, like M-F schedules, business attire, leaving work for part of the day for appointments, having a desk and a cubicle, knowing how to do computery things, and all those other things I see in “Dilbert.” I hate when I am expected to fax things.
It’s not so foreign to me that I don’t know anyone who has, but out of my parents, three sisters and their partners, my closest friends, and my husband and me, I count one office worker and two former office workers.
My mom wasn’t physically abusive or anything, but I honestly don’t ever remember her telling me she loved me. If I told her that I loved her, she had 2 pat answers- she either said ‘Well, I hate you.’ or, ‘No, you don’t’. Every time. She rarely told me I had done a good job at anything, rather picking it apart. She never wanted to do anything with me.
I just thought that’s how mothers were, until I got my first real job in a factory at age 18, and worked with a bunch of middle aged ladies, most of which were mothers.
They were always talking about doing this or that with their kids, taking off work for school functions (my mother simply didn’t go.) and when they talked about their kids, you could feel the love and pride. I was gobsmacked.
It made me realize how different my mother was, and wish so badly that we could have been like other families.
I’m the opposite - I can’t fathom NOT having a loving parent (mother and/or father.)
How on earth could someone not love their own flesh 'n blood child? Why would someone keep a child they don’t love or want anything to do with when there are thousands of families who ache for a child to care for?
It breaks my heart to read the stories on this board about neglectful/abusive/distant parents because I grew up believing that there are two people in the entire world that will love and protect you no matter what and that’s your mother and father. The sheer amount of parents who fail in those two regards is actually sickening to me.