# 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:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**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, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/41 "2004-07-24T01:10:42Z")
Waittaminnit… didn’t “Paranoid” make it to, like #4 on the Billboard singles chart? (Sabbath’s only Top 40 hit, IIRC)? I can’t imagine a Top-Ten single and maybe a deeper cut from the same album not getting airplay… ---
**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, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/42 "2004-07-24T01:38:05Z")
> [@The Asbestos Mango](#): > > Didn’t “Paranoid” make it to, like #4 on the Billboard singles chart? Ha! No. _Maybe_ in the U.K. charts, but the U.S. is something else again. The idea of something as heavy as Sabbath in _Billboard_’s top ten is… really… really… Dear god, I’ve peed myself. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Orzabal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@Roland\_Orzabal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Orzabal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/43 "2004-07-24T02:53:23Z")
My parents weren’t naive at all. In fact, I had exactly the opposite problem: they were convinced I was going to do all sorts of things I never even did. My mother, for example, was convinced that my first girlfriend and I were having sex (we weren’t). She didn’t have a problem with it, she just refused to accept that it wasn’t happening (and oddly, her acceptance made it all the more annoying). Mom (after I took my girlfriend home): So, did you two have a good time tonight? Me: :rolleyes: For the zillionth time, Mom, we’re not having sex. Mom: Suuure you’re not. You just go in your room, shut the door, and spend the next four hours talking to each other and playing video games. Me: Yeah, pretty much [admittedly leaving out the making out and heavy petting that took place the other 50% of the time, but still]. Mom: It’s okay, really. I know I taught you how to be safe. You’re a good guy, I’m sure you’re being responsible about it. Me: MOM. Stop it. Now. …and so on, ad nauseum. Meanwhile, my stepfather was convinced that my friends and I were just itching to get our hands on some beer and pot, and go on all sorts of testosterone-driven escapades of idiocy just like _he_ did when _he_ was our age. Naturally, he didn’t object to this…no, he wanted to hook us up. Me: “Hey, I’m going out with the guys tonight.” Stepdad: “Cool. You guys going partying?” Me: “Um, not really. We’re just gonna catch a movie and play some Goldeneye.” Stepdad: “You need some beer?” Me: “None of us drink, but thanks [, dumbass].” My biological father was the best of the bunch, really. He didn’t care what I did either, but that was mostly because he understood that I wasn’t going to do much that he could possibly disapprove of. Yeah, I had an interesting upbringing. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/44 "2004-07-24T03:13:36Z")
Neither of my parents ever said one word about puberty to me, ever. They are both dead now, but noth were still around when I was in my 30’s. So it’s not like they were cut down before they had the chance. :dubious: And my mom never, EVER, would discuss puberty in films with anyone at all. So yes, though I’m not quite sure if _naive_ is the term so much as _puritanical_. ---
**Author:** ![AveDementia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@AveDementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AveDementia)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2004, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/45 "2004-07-24T03:41:12Z")
> [@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. Milk covers the smell, at least on the breath, but probably not on a breathalyzer. And certainly not if the alcohol is on your clothes. -Ave, child of a secret alcoholic. ---
**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 24, 2004, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/46 "2004-07-24T15:32:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Milk covers the smell, at least on the breath, but probably not on a breathalyzer. And certainly not if the alcohol is on your clothes. Anything you drink _may_ mask a breathalyzer. That is why the test is given only a half hour after anything may have been put in the mouth. Any benefit you may get from a masking agent is gone. I have been around many people trying to pass as sober. Its not their breath, its coming out of the their skin. Impossible to hide unless your mother is Mrs Gemma. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/47 "2004-07-25T04:53:21Z")
I don’t remember my parents being typically naive when I was growing up, but I didn’t do any drugs (not even alcohol) when I was living with them and S-E-X was a subject that they hardly ever talked about. In fact I distinctly remember my Dad’s very halting, five minute lecture on The Facts of Life when I was fifteen. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I knew how to work the public library and knew what went where. **DesertWife** , on the other hand, had something of a blind spot about her second daughter’s sexuality. **DesertLass** was thirteen when we got married and was spending most of her time living with her Dad (The high school at that end of town was far better). I left a general sex-ed book where she’d find it, and she did. When she was eighteen **DW** and I were going on a two-week cruise. Since **DL** had been seeing the same young man for the last six months, I mulled things over and left a book about oral sex on the table with a note, “Wish I’d had this information when I was starting out.” When we got back, the book was gone, the sheets on our bed (the only double bed in the place) had been changed, and two towels were in the hamper. Three months later, the subject came up, and **DW**. hadn’t a clue. I think, perhaps, since I saw **DL** as a young lady and not a daughter, it was more obvious to me. DD ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/48 "2004-07-25T06:12:10Z")
Dude, that’s totally creepy. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/49 "2004-07-25T16:00:18Z")
When I was seventeen, my parents were seperated and my father was living elsewhere. I was “in custody” though not in jail exactly-- kind of a no-man’s-land, but I got to go home for leaves. My long time girlfriend, who went by a male sounding nickname: we’ll call her NICK, would park her car down the street and sneak into my downstairs bedroom while no one was home. I would spend my time at home in my room ;). She would leave while my mother was driving me back to the outer reaches. One day, after my mom and I had just left, my SO is in my room getting dressed or somesuch, when she hears someone come in the house. She gets scared and hides in my closet. ( A little backstory about the room itself. It had been my dad’s shop, with a tablesaw and lots of tools until my older brother moved in. When my brother went into the ARMY I got to move in.) She’s in the closet when she hears whoever it is coming downstairs. Now she’s getting really scared! Suddenly the closet door opens. She’s standing there terrified, and my dad says, “Oh, Hi, NICK!” like he ran into her at the grocery store. ( He was apparently looking for his shop-vac.) They chat while my dad looks for his shop-vac and she makes some excuse-- I swear I can’t remember what-- and walks down the block to get in her car and leave. Later, my dad tells me the story in the you’ll-never-guess-who-I-saw style. I nearly choked. ---
**Author:** ![Selkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Selkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Selkie)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/50 "2004-07-25T16:08:43Z")
My parents were watching **Exit to Eden**. My mother turns and asks me, rather loudly, “What’s a dominatrix?” Claimed never to have heard of any facet of BDSM before. Now I’d be a lot cooler about discussing it with her, but at 16-ish I was mortified beyond words. ---
**Author:** ![MaddyStrut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@MaddyStrut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaddyStrut)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/51 "2004-07-25T16:46:44Z")
When I was in grade school my parents bought an albino chihuahua. They decided to name it something based on its color–in their words “that cute name black people call white people.” Luckily, they heard it wrong and named the dog “Hunky” rather than the other word. At least I could play that one off as an ironic take on the dog’s size. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/52 "2004-07-25T19:33:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Dude, that’s totally creepy. **Green Bean** , were you replying to **DesertDog** ’s post? What’s creepy about that? DL is lucky to have at least one parent around that is willing to give her good advice. My dad gave me his copy of **The Joy of Sex** when I was 13, and I learned a lot from that book. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/53 "2004-07-25T21:37:58Z")
My Dad is hopelessly naive about the law. He cannot understand that once you get a lawsuit to court, things have gone beyond the stage of “sitting down & politely working things out like gentlemen”. Courts are what you do when that doesn’t work. He believes that he is an expert in the law because he watches _Judge Judy_ on TV. :smack: He cannot keep his yapper shut, always phrases things in such a way as to put his case in a terrible light, & tries to pass himself off as better educated than he is. The lawyers he hires are total losers; the last one had his office over a grocery store, and carried a 5th in his briefcase. Needless to say, we always get skunked in lawsuits. Ghod forbid that I ever be falsely accused of a crime. He’d hire me the only heroin-addicted lawyer in Tennessee, & if he took the stand…YIKES!! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: I’d get the Chair. If I was accused of peeing in a public place, I’d get the Chair! ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/54 "2004-07-25T21:40:10Z")
Oh. Yeah. He always says “We won a moral victory!” every time the other side waxes our collective @ss. He does _that_, too! :rolleyes: My blood pressure… ---
**Author:** ![Soapbox\_Monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Soapbox\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soapbox_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2004, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/55 "2004-07-26T00:14:58Z")
Maybe naivety skips a generation. My dad is a big time sex-aholic who wasn’t faithful to my mom nor to his first wife, and I can only imagine the kind of man whore he most likely was in his youth. My mother was married to a drug dealer in her first marriage, and she has told me tales of the experimentation she used to do with drugs back in her “hippie days.” And yet here I am, their 19 year old son. Never had any kind of sexual contact nor touched a drug in my life. I often feel like we were put in the wrong order. I’m clearly the one who should have been born in the 40’s or 50’s. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Bird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Little\_Bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Bird)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2004, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/56 "2004-07-26T01:36:46Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > 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 and I have been living together for 7 months and my mom still drags out the air mattress in a different room on a different floor for him. Dad just rolls his eyes. I don’t think this is naivety in her case so much as “my house my rules” since I was a very “premature” baby myself. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2004, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/57 "2004-07-26T02:00:22Z")
I’m a little hazy on the details but I seem to remember my mother once saying something or other about “gay lesbians”…she didn’t seem to be aware that was the only kind there was. ---
**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 26, 2004, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/58 "2004-07-26T02:36:26Z")
I’m pretty sure there are dour lesbians, too. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2004, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866/59 "2004-07-26T02:53:44Z")
> [@Soapbox Monkey](#): > > And yet here I am, their 19 year old son. Never had any kind of sexual contact nor touched a drug in my life. I often feel like we were put in the wrong order. I’m clearly the one who should have been born in the 40’s or 50’s. Ah, but they **were** born in the 40s or 50s (probably, anyway, I don’t know) and look what trouble they got into. I am disgustingly innocent by most standards myself – never tried drugs, tried smoking once and hated it, rarely drink, didn’t have sex until I was 25 because I wanted to wait until a decent guy came along and he was slow to arrive – but I know my parents weren’t. I mystify my mom sometimes, I think, though she’s not unhappy about my apparent normality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-had-has-impossibly-naive-parents/255866.md?page=2)