When was the first time you...: Sunday Night
When was the first time you realized your parents didn't know it all (i.e. made a bad/wrong decision, expressed doubt, acted "human")?
The first time I realized that my parents might not have all the right answers was about the time I was in fifth grade. My mother, father and I were out shopping one day and we ran into some family friends. I was impatient to move on, but my parents were discussing various things and one of the friends asked how the "move and house hunt was going." I looked at my parents in confusion and asked what was going on and they said that we would talk about it later. I got really upset and stalked off while they finished their conversation. Long story short, it turned out that my father was offered a promotion and we were supposed to move from Nashville to Charlotte, NC over the summer. They had known for months and had never said anything because they thought I was going to be upset. Umm, yeah, I was. The end of this story is that my parents never said they were sorry and never thought they had done anything wrong. We didn't end up moving and I wasn't forced to leave my friends, but I never forgot that my parents were planning a whole new life for us and never mentioned it to me. I know it seems like a small thing, but it really made me doubt their honesty. Generally, I trusted my parents, but after this incident things were different. Sometimes the small things leave long memories.
7 comments:
you know, it's funny, i know my parents make wrong decisions at times, but it seems like i still hold them on a pedestal. i can't come up with any specific instances. i wish i could have such selective amnesia with everyone.
Hmm...I still consider my mom to be all knowing. My dad on the other hand, well, he's my Dad, I love him :o), but sometimes I just have to shake my head and wonder at his thought process.
Well, there was a moment in my past (I was about 15) when I realized that my mom made a mistake in judgment with me. I won't go into it too much, but it had to do with a teacher acting inappropriately with me. I didn't know how to talk about it, she didn't know how to talk about it, and, eventually, we never brought it up again. The thing is, I think she was so upset and panicked about something like that happening to me and I was not verbally prepared to talk about it. So, seeing as how things like that were not on the news every five minutes, and there was no dialogue I was familiar with in trying to talk about it (and the same for my mom), it left me feeling angry and unprotected. Coming at it years later, I don't feel that way anymore. But, the experience does make me think about how I might handle it with my own kids.
I almost hate to say this, but I still generally think that my parents have all the answers. I can't come up with anything that stands out as "that time when they screwed up."
Just to clarify, I still think my mother and father were really smart people who generally made great decisions, but I realize they weren't perfect. Sometimes it is startling to realize things like that.
me, too!
isn't it funny how much trouble we have seeing our parents in a negative light? it's like by saying something bad about them, we're dishonoring them or something. i hope my kid never remembers my mistakes.
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