# Who had/has impossibly naive parents? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 19, 2004, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866 "2004-07-19T19:34:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/21 "2004-07-21T12:25:43Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Then, aged thirty, after I had been living with my girlfriend for three months, she still thought I slept on the sofa. > > Bless! My mum was exactly the same. We wern’t living together, but I spent a lot of nights at my boyfriend’s. My mum thought I was sleeping on the sofa. This illusion was shattered when she found my pill perscription. ---
**Author:** ![Greywolf73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d9b06d/32.png) [@Greywolf73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greywolf73)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/22 "2004-07-21T14:13:58Z")
My own parents weren’t terribly naive but my best friend’s parents certainly were. In high school, her mother caught the two of us sneaking out of my friend’s bedroom window in the middle of the night _in the dead of winter_. We were sneaking out to meet our boyfriends. We told her we were just going out for a walk. At 1 AM. In 30 degree weather. She believed us, told us not to stay out too long and then went back to bed! ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/23 "2004-07-21T15:54:13Z")
> [@AngelicGemma](#): > > My mum was exactly the same. We wern’t living together, but I spent a lot of nights at my boyfriend’s. My mum thought I was sleeping on the sofa. This illusion was shattered when she found my pill perscription. Sheesh. When I started dating my ex, who was the first guy I had sex with, she was the one who told me maybe I should go ahead and get on the pill shortly into the relationship. She doesn’t want to hear anything else about my sex life, but she does know I have one. (Yes, Mom, I can see you right now with your fingers in your ears yelling LA LA LA LA…_g_) My ex’s evil parents, when we visited, not only put us in separate rooms, but on separate FLOORS. Um, people, we’re both adults. We’ve been boinking since February, and it is now December. We won’t Do It in your house, but we sleep in the same bed all the freakin’ time. My own parents put us up on the sofa bed when we visited **them**. ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/24 "2004-07-21T16:58:42Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > Sheesh. When I started dating my ex, who was the first guy I had sex with, she was the one who told me maybe I should go ahead and get on the pill shortly into the relationship. She doesn’t want to hear anything else about my sex life, but she does know I have one. (Yes, Mom, I can see you right now with your fingers in your ears yelling LA LA LA LA…_g_) > > My ex’s evil parents, when we visited, not only put us in separate rooms, but on separate FLOORS. Um, people, we’re both adults. We’ve been boinking since February, and it is now December. We won’t Do It in your house, but we sleep in the same bed all the freakin’ time. My own parents put us up on the sofa bed when we visited **them**. My boyfriend’s mum has never had a problem with me staying over. The first couple of times she didn’t even know, but when she saw us sneaking down the stairs her only responce was “Oh! Hello love! Has he made you any breakfast?..” She even gave me a lift home. When my parents found out we were sleeping together my dad had a “not in MY house” attitude. But once we’d been dateing for 8 months my boyfriend was allowed to stay over. They even bought me a double bed! Oh, and I’d like the add. When I said my mum “found” my pill perscription. I mean she found it ripped up in my bin, and put it together to find out what it was. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/25 "2004-07-21T18:47:16Z")
> [@AngelicGemma](#): > > Oh, and I’d like the add. When I said my mum “found” my pill perscription. I mean she found it ripped up in my bin, and put it together to find out what it was. Wow. If my mom snooped in my stuff like that, I’d let her have it. She’s never been like that, though. I should have been really insulted by being put on a different floor from the person who was, at that point, my fiance. There’s no point in my getting worked up about it now, but what a screwed-up family that was. It’s just as well things fell apart. ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/26 "2004-07-21T19:48:56Z")
When I was telling my mom about the cruise I went on earlier this month, I laughingly mentioned that after meeting up with some female acquantances, I was having so much fun I didn’t even sleep in my own cabin half the time. “Oh, you were staying in your father’s cabin the rest of the time?” was her response :eek: A part of me wanted to tell her the full truth- that no, I wasn’t in my room because I was sleeping with some other woman, and by sleeping with I mean having sex with, and it was an experience so intense I walked out of it with a bruise pubic bone…but because my mom is on HER vacation, I decided it wouldn’t be nice to ruin it for her with all the visual imagery of her son boinking strange women on a cruise ship 😛 ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2004, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/27 "2004-07-21T20:34:45Z")
You know, some of these supposed examples of cluelessness may actually fall under the heading of “picking your battles.” When I was in college I lived with my boyfriend but we always pretended with my parents that we were living in separate rooms with same-sex roommates. We still refer to a friend as my former roommate, even though she was actually living with \*her[\i]boyfriend in the room next door for that whole year. Twenty years later I’m pretty convince that they weren’t fooled at all–they just decided not to make and issue of it. ---
**Author:** ![Beauty\_Personified](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e480ec/32.png) [@Beauty\_Personified](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beauty_Personified)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/28 "2004-07-22T11:06:51Z")
> [@MrTuffPaws](#): > > Continually, I came home blown to the wind, yet not a peep, and yet continually I would come home sober and straight and I would get yelled at, threatened, and generally abused. Could this be because you were high so much more often than you were sober? So when you were sober, you seemed “different than normal” to others. 😉 Anyhoo… ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/29 "2004-07-22T13:23:49Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > Wow. If my mom snooped in my stuff like that, I’d let her have it. She’s never been like that, though. Trust me. I didn’t let it go quietly. “WHAT DO YO MEAN YOU _FOUND_ IT?!” I only stopped when she pointed out my dad was in the next room, and didn’t know. Her excuse was that she was emptying my bin, saw what she recognised as a piece of perscription. And was worried, so he put it together to “make sure I was alright.” ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/30 "2004-07-22T13:37:32Z")
My apologies…but it’s “prescription” not “perscription.” I guess you need to empty your bin yourself, or not put some things in it. How annoying! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/31 "2004-07-23T06:08:21Z")
Actually, looking back on my post, I misunderstood and gave an example of being _gullible_, not naive. Here’s a good one-when we were in tenth grade, _Schindler’s List_ was released. Since we were studying the Holocaust, our teachers took us on a field trip to see it. (We were 15-16). My friend’s grandmother saw it the week before we did and said to her parents, “I don’t know if Shannon should be allowed to see it-they showed a man’s _penis_!” Another friend had a 9 pm curfew all throughout high school (yes, even on weekends), but in the meantime, was allowed to go out all hours of daylight with her boyfriend (going back to his apartment-although her parents didn’t know how much older he was-he was 20 when she was 15). Because, of course, you can’t have sex until AFTER 10 pm. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/32 "2004-07-23T14:24:14Z")
> [@](#): > > You know, some of these supposed examples of cluelessness may actually fall under the heading of “picking your battles.” I was thinking the same thing. One thing drinkers don’t seem to realize is when you are drunk you stink… A lot. Nothing can stop it. Unless your mother’s nose wasn’t working she smelled the alcohol. Probably the smell lingered for hours. I bet she was being purposely obtuse so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/33 "2004-07-23T14:38:32Z")
OK, picture the scene. I’m 21 years old, moving out of my dorm room after I graduated, and my mother finds an instruction leaflet from a box of condoms under the bed. She picks it up and demands to know what the hell it is, and am I having sex with “that boy” (meaning my 22 year old boyfriend, whom I’d been seeing for over a year and a half by this point"). I, of course, vehemently deny this, and claim that no, it must have been here when I moved in and the cleaners obviously didn’t do their job properly. She let it drop. I think I convinced her. Of course, I just hope that she didn’t “accidentally” (my parents are prone to snooping) notice the boxes of condoms in my bedside cabinet when she came over last weekend. _That_ would have taken far too much explaining. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/34 "2004-07-23T15:54:07Z")
My friend’s grandmother had us all in stitches once we found out what happened at my friend’s wedding reception. As the bride and groom were getting ready to leave the reception for their hotel, the bride’s grandmother pulled her aside and gave her a speech about “not worrying about tonight.” “But why would I be worried about tonight?” my friend naively asked. “Well, you know – your first time!” was her grandmother’s response. (Keep in mind she had been living with the groom for about 5 years by that point.) I was laughing so hard I was choking as my friend was telling me this story, several months after the wedding. “But hasn’t your grandmother been to your house?” I asked, “and hasn’t she seen the one bedroom, with the one bed in it?” “Yeah, but she’s apparently convinced herself that he’s been sleeping on the sofa for the past 5 years.” (What’s even funnier about the force of Grandma’s denial is that she herself, back in the 30s, had snuck off and eloped with my friend’s grandfather when they both turned 18 and were still high school seniors, just so they wouldn’t feel guilty about having sex. They both continued living with their respective parents and had a “real” wedding a few months later, but never told anyone about the elopement until many years after the fact, when they slipped up in talking about when their anniversary fell.) ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/35 "2004-07-23T17:52:18Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I was thinking the same thing. One thing drinkers don’t seem to realize is when you are drunk you stink… A lot. Nothing can stop it. Unless your mother’s nose wasn’t working she smelled the alcohol. Probably the smell lingered for hours. I bet she was being purposely obtuse so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. My mum was born without a sense of smell. This was very useful when underage drinking! ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/36 "2004-07-23T19:25:50Z")
> [@](#): > > My mum was born without a sense of smell. Congratulations. I think. ---
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/37 "2004-07-23T20:42:37Z")
My dad had done every drug under the sun by the time I was 5. By the time of my teen years, he \*expected \* I would do stuff. And, he could predict, with alarming accuracy, the kinds of things I would try. I’ll never forget coming to my college apt. about a week after getting a tattoo to a message on my machine from my dad that said, “Adrienne, if you’re thinking of getting a tattoo, don’t.” Click. It was eery. haha 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Montgomery\_Burns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/db5fbb/32.png) [@Montgomery\_Burns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Montgomery_Burns)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2004, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/38 "2004-07-23T21:07:31Z")
My step mother once asked during dinner what a lesbian was. That stopped some conversation. I have a friend whose father asked her a couple of years ago what oral sex was. I’m not sure how she explained it but his resonse was “Who would want to do that?” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@The\_Asbestos\_Mango](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Asbestos_Mango)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/39 "2004-07-24T00:09:40Z")
> [@the Lady](#): > > My parents picked me up from a party once and drove the 20 minutes home with my mother never once suspecting I was _really_ loaded. I thought the drunk, naked people hanging from trees at the party would have been a good give-away, but I guess not. > > And I’ll never forget the time she rather loudly asked “what’s a dildo?” in the middle of a crowded family restaurant. Your story is better than mine. I remember one time when I was in my teens, my stepfather had brought home a back massager that a customer had given him as a gift. It consisted of a long thick handle with two wide wheels at one end. He held the object aloft and said, “It looks like a dildo?” My mom blinked and asked “What’s a dildo?” I looked at my stepfather, said, “You explain it to her” and left the room. Now, I don’t think this qualifies so much as illiteracy as lack of cultural awareness but, around 1984 or so, I discovered heavy metal in a big way. So, here I was, all seventeen year old me, in my room listening to one of my favorite heavy metal albums, and my stepfather comes stomping into the room and said, “We didn’t listen to music like that when I was your age.” My stepfather graduated high school in 1972. I was listening to _Paranoid_. We did the “No we didn’t, yes you did” back and forth until I showed him the copyright date on the record cover. Now, I wouldn’t have expected that stepdad would have actually been into the heavy rock scene, but I don’t see how he could have been unaware of Black Sabbath, since they would have been getting serious airplay back in the early '70’s. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/40 "2004-07-24T00:54:10Z")
> [@The Asbestos Mango](#): > > Now, I wouldn’t have expected that stepdad would have actually been into the heavy rock scene, but I don’t see how he could have been unaware of Black Sabbath, since they would have been getting serious airplay back in the early '70’s. Actually, in the early seventies, Sabbath got hardly any radio play _at all_. They were selling well, but radio was a lot different back then. Metal just didn’t get played on commercial radio. You might hear some Deep Purple if it was late and the DJ was feeling _really_ brave. Apart from that, you had your country stations, and the pop/rock stations were playing a lot of Jim Croce, Carly Simon, or a little further up the dial you had your Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross-- that sort of stuff. No Sabbath, man. (Although _everyone_ had those first three albums. Well, all the cool kids, anyway.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866.md?page=3)