Please know that when you get out it does get better. Go to college. Get educated so you can support yourself. It does get better.
I could fill up several pages here with the fuckery the parents did when I was a kid. And beyond. I’ll share one, small, stupid one:
Al Martino singing “Spanish Eyes”. On vinyl. On our new hi-fi that was disguised as a junky piece of some kind of furniture. Apparently Al Martino singing “Spanish Eyes” sent chills down ma’s spine. So we heard it over and over and over. Oy.
Well, my mother was crazy, so the list is long. I’ll try to pare it down.
-
What she didn’t like, wasn’t allowed. She didn’t like music. So we weren’t allowed to play music (radio, record player, anything) anywhere she could hear it at all; she didn’t like cats, so we were never allowed to have cats; she didn’t like rodents, so we were never allowed to have mice/hamsters/gerbils/guinea pigs.
-
She had a home-based business, so, in the days before call-waiting, we weren’t allowed to stay on the phone for more than 15 minutes, because “A customer might be trying to call”; she, on the other hand, was more than happy to spend two hours talking to her sister in Baltimore.
-
We had a man renting a room from us who was molesting me. Finally, I talked to a school counselor about it, and at the counselor’s advice, talked to my Mom about it. Her response? “Well, just stay away from him”. Easy, right? Well, except that every time I asked for a ride anywhere, he’d volunteer to take me, and she’d let him! Thanks, Mom.
-
Food/eating. She would always harp on my weight. I’ll grant you, I was fat. Still, harping on it doesn’t help. But then, if she served dinner and I only took half-portions, she’d nag me that I wasn’t eating enough. :rolleyes:
-
Superstitions. In our house, you weren’t allowed to: step on a cricket (even though she hated them); lay down a loaf of bread upside down; hang anything on a door knob. These were all, apparently, bad luck.
-
General irrationality. Best illustrated by the fact that she got rid of her microwave oven because “they cause cancer; everyone knows that”, but continued to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. Somehow, I don’t think it was that year and a half of microwave exposure that caused the lung cancer and congestive heart failure that killed her.
I could go on (obviously), but think I’ll stop there.
For the people who are saying “My parents smoked everywhere, all the time”, my only thought on that (at the time it was happening) was that everyone who smoked did so everywhere, all the time. My parents did it too, but they certainly didn’t have a market on it.
True, but it was rough on people who didn’t smoke, like kids. My husband and his siblings hated it when their dad would smoke in the closed-up car because they’d be practically choking.
Oh, and in 1970, my dad was handing out cigars when he became a first-time dad. He’d picked up smoking because that’s what a lot of people did. The obstetrician told dad that smoking isn’t good for him, or especially for the new baby. He stopped that day.
Whenever I was going to a party in high school, my mom would always get me there late … but would always be exactly on time to pick me up. I never said anything, but it used to infuriate me. The message that I got was, when it was important to me that she be on time it didn’t really matter, but god forbid she look rude by leaving me there longer than I was invited for.
Oh, I agree! It was rough on us, too. In fact, when my oldest daughter had just turned one, my MIL still smoked (she’s long since quit; my first-born is now 23), and my MIL was holding my baby while I loaded other stuff into the car. Suddenly, the baby started screaming. I looked up to see what was wrong. My MIL had lit a cigarette, and while the cig was in her mouth, she burned my daughter’s cheek!
I quickly snatched my baby away from her and told her she would never, ever, ever again smoke while holding my child.
For years, my MIL’s big ‘thing’, when told that smoking during pregnancy is dangerous, and second-hand smoke is bad for the children, she would say “Well, I smoked through all six pregnancies, and all my babies were fine” (Well, except for the five she miscarried; I guess she would have had 11 kids, otherwise. But her Rh factor was screwed up, too, so I never brought up smoking in these arguments). And one day, sick of hearing it, I said “You know, you may well find a crack addict out there somewhere who’s managed to have six healthy kids; doesn’t mean that doing crack during pregnancy is good for the babies”. MIL, to her credit, conceded the point.
As to the parents smoking full-time while raising six kids, well, I don’t know about his siblings, but the only health problem my hubby has is his respiratory system. He has chronic bronchitis/sinus infections. He’s never been a smoker.
Now, I can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this is due to him being raised in a house full of cigarette smoke, but I do believe it’s at least partially responsible!
I’m so Very sorry. No one should have to put up with all of that… 
norinew, christ, I am so so sorry you had to deal with that.
My father still does this – he has this thing about wasting food, to the point that he will NOT throw away anything that’s spoiled. If there’s cheese that’s growing moldy, or something that’s starting to smell bad, my mother and I have to sneak and throw it out when he’s not home. (He never notices then)
Mom farting while cooking breakfast.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget Ray Conniff and Billy Vaughn. As far as my dad’s concerned, Billy Vaughn and his orchestra hung the moon. :mad: Then again, compared to some of the stuff I read in this thread, I guess I got off easy. I wonder, if the Princess gets her own SDMB account years from now, what she would post about me on a similar thread?:o
My mom (a NURSE!) popped my zits.
A couple of the things my parents did that pissed me off when I was younger ended up being really positive, and I bow to their wisdom:
When I was 12 I really wanted one of those beds that’s like a bunk bed, with a desk and wardrobe underneath it. I was a bit obsessed about it and talked about it all the time. One weekend my dad said “about that bed…” and led me into the garage. I expected to see a bed there waiting to be taken upstairs, but instead there was a drill, screws, screwdriver and some paper. “Design it,” he said “and then we’ll go down the lumber yard.” I was really pissed off, and my disappointment showed. But eventually I started to sketch what I wanted, and realised I could add my own customizations to it. The next weekend we bought the wood, and I spent the next few weeks with a saw, making the thing. Taught me a hell of a lot more about woodwork than two years of woodwork at school did. And I had a bed/desk/thing that was the envy of my friends (until we became interested in girls, at which point I realised how childish and geeky it was, and was desperate to get rid of it).
The next one was a car. We lived in a tiny village with nothing to do, and I was bored out of my mind. In the UK we couldn’t start learning to drive until 17. All my friends lived a minimum of 6 miles away. I made my parents’ lives hell begging first to move to the town, and second for a car. I drew up lists of friends who’d been bought cars, etc. etc. I learned to drive but still had to borrow one of my parents’ cars. I totalled my dad’s car and he said “shame, I was planning to get a new car, and give that one to you,” to which I replied “so can I have the insurance money then?” He just laughed. Anyway, I bought a moped, then used that to ride to a gas station every day where I pumped gas until I had enough money to buy my own car, which I did. It taught me another measure of self reliance (though my dad kinda undermined the lesson when he first saw it by saying “get that piece of £%$# off my driveway”.)
Oh yeah, my mom, also a nurse, popped my zits too.
My grandfather quit smoking his beloved pipe in 1951 when my dad was born because someone told him it was bad for the baby. 50 years later, he got esophageal cancer anyway (fortunately it didn’t kill him). I always thought that was just horribly unfair.
As a kid, it always drove me nuts that my parents tried to force me to eat breakfast. Well into high school. I know they meant well and were concerned for my health, but I physically cannot eat anything before I’ve been up for at least 1-2 hours. It feels like I’ve eaten a sandbag and sometimes I vomit. I can handle a glass of water and that’s about it. My stomach just needs extra time to turn on. I’ve known this about myself for a long time, but it took them years to finally accept that their daughter is not a breakfast person and that it is not something to worry about. They’ve finally stopped bugging me about it and will sometimes even explain it to relatives when we all go fora visit: “Oh, no, chizzuk doesn’t eat breakfast, it’s fine, she’ll get hungry later.” But for awhile, mornings really sucked. I hate mornings in general and being forced to eat when you really don’t want to makes them a thousand times worse. A lot of the time I’d wait until they left me alone for a second and then throw the stuff away.
My mother was not the best cook in the world. However, she went through a phase where she got hold of a couple of “gourmet” cookbooks and was experimenting with the recipes. And oh my word, the indescribable horrors she turned out.
It came to a head one night when she served some sort of…well, I don’t know what it was, but it was fighting with my fork as I tried to eat it. I got about two bites down, said excuse me, went out to the kitchen and made a sandwich. Mom blew a gasket, got Dad involved in it. I finally sat back down at the table (with my sandwich), took my plate and set it on the floor. My dog immediately headed for it like a striking snake. He took one sniff and backed off. And growled.
Not another word was said. And fortunately the cookbooks went on the shelf, never to be opened again. We went back to steak 'n spuds and all was well.
Oh, my mother was nuts about leftovers (well, that and everything else, obviously). If there was more than a spoonful of anything left over from dinner, she wanted it put away (we took turns clearing the table), and if there was less, we were supposed to throw it away. But of course, we were supposed to know if the quantity of something was < or > than what she would want to keep. If we interrupted her post-dinner cigarette too often, to ask her opinion, she was likely to have a tantrum. So one night, I was clearing the table. There was a bowl of corn with maybe a Tbsp. full of corn in it. I tossed it. She went ballistic, railing about how I must think they’re made of money to be able to toss perfectly good leftovers like that (Oh, how I wanted to say “I know, Mom, you want me to put it in the fridge until it’s good and moldy”, but I liked my head attached to my shoulders). It’s actually the only time I remember my father standing up to my mother on my behalf. After she had carried on for ten minutes, and I was in tears, my father stood up and said, quite firmly “Dee, that’s enough”. Amazingly, she shut up.
She didn’t stop her weirdness about leftovers, of course, but it shut her up for one evening. 
Damn, we never had leftovers around the house of anything except ‘bulky’ foods like meatloaf. Mom knew portion control of side dishes and could make just the right amount of mashed potatoes for 4 people, or the right amount of corn. [she grew up in the depression, and one of the things that was popular was dietary hygene complete with portion control being taught to girls in school] Meat loaf was a popular main course to be made because the leftovers served for lunch the next day as the filling in sandwiches. Whole poultry got the carcasses turned into soup.
Yeah, my mother grew up during the depression as well, and I suspect that’s where a lot of her food issues came from. She was terrified of not having enough food. We had a separate freezer in the basement that was always packed with way more food than we’d ever eat. Our pantry looked like something out of someone’s bomb shelter!
Therefore, she would always cook enough to serve twice as many people as she was feeding! Even after we were all pretty much grown (I was the youngest of five), all my sisters and their families would come for Sunday dinner. I can’t tell you how many times the back of my hand cramped from peeling the sheer quantity of potatoes my mother demanded. After there were plenty of potatoes, she’d say “We’d better peel five more; what if someone wants seconds?” Heaven forbid someone should want more of something and it not be there. :eek:
My parents were pretty decent folks really. They smoked in the car, with the windows rolled up, but who didn’t back then?
My dad used to fall asleep on the couch every night with some lame-ass show on. If you tried to change the channel though he’d somehow sense this from a deep sleep, and tell you to leave it because he was only “resting his eyes.” So, we had to sit through the rest of “Barnaby Jones” (for example) and suspend our disbelief that a septuagenarian hill-billy was able to outrun 20 year old bad guys and wrestle them to the ground.
There was that one summer where we put an addition on the house. My dad had his slave labour for the project, me at 11 years old, and my brothers at 17 and 9. The four of us pretty much on our own excavated, and built a 400 foot addition. I lost my entire summer that year. While other kids were out riding bikes, going to the beach, playing baseball, etc., I was shoveling dirt, sawing boards, hammering nails, installing doors and windows, and even got to go up on the roof to shingle.
I’ll tell you though, I learned an awful lot that summer.
Good times…
My parents had a 61 Ford Falcon that they wanted to sell in 1971. My mom said that, if they could get $350 for it they would take it.
I told my mom that the car was worth at least $400 and asked her that if I could find a buyer for over $350 would she give me the difference. She agreed.
So, two days later after my $2.50 ad had been in the paper for a day, I got some phone calls. I told the guy to come by the house to look at it.
My mom wasn’t home when this guy in his 50’s showed up. I showed him the car, told him what worked great, what didn’t work too well, and where I used bailng wire to hold up the muffler. I wanted a profit but I didn’t feel I needed to mislead anybody to get my price.
He liked my honesty and agreed to pay me $425 for the car.
I told him that mom would be home in just a few minutes to sign the title over. Mom show’s up and as she’s greeting the man he says he wants to buy the car.
She said, “Fine, just give me a check for $350 and it’s a deal.”
With my dad, it was Perry Mason. And yeah, he was just “resting his eyes”. We had just the one TV back then, and even though I rather liked Perry Mason, it might have been fun to watch some other show.