So, the other day Mom was polishing up her cast list of my life and I was helping her on a few last names, occupations and relationships to me and so on and so forth. It was interesting. While I joke that she's my stalker, it's really not that creepy. She just likes to know what's going on with me. She has her own life and all too. Honest! It's just funny how different she and Dad are with respect to me. I don't think either one of them cares about me less than the other, but Mom knows every little detail and Dad's perfectly happy to have overall highlights and only get the details on things that specifically interest him. He really does have the highlights down though. I quizzed him once. He did shockingly well.

I blame my completely schizophrenic nature on them and their differences. And I guess on being a Gemini (twins! two faced! woo!). I used to joke that Dad fought in Vietnam while Mom protested it. Not that that phrase sums up who they are all that well or their differences, but it seemed to prove a point at the time. They're both individuals with a million nuances, but... Mom tends to be the more emotional one while Dad's a bit more rational. So I'm kinda both. I can fly off the handle and cry at lots of things and be sympathetic and so on and so forth while being rational at the same time. This is not making sense. I tried to explain to a friend of mine once that while I do illogical strange 'girl things' (as I believe he put it), I realize that I'm being illogical and strange and just need to get it out of my system and then I'll be fine. And I don't actually expect others to take me seriously when I'm being goofy - because I'm still rational and know they shouldn't take me seriously. But sometimes you need to be emotional and sometimes you need to rein it in. Argh. This isn't making sense and I'm afraid that my parents are going to think I see them as an emotional freakshow and a cyborg and that is NOT the case. It's probably a topic that requires a long discussion and not just a couple paragraphs on a blog. It's just something I was thinking about this morning.

One thing my parents did do the same was embrace Mocking as a great Parental Tool. I got the occasional spanking and sometimes frequent groundings, but they really liked the mocking thing for the day to day stuff. Like when I went through the whining phase. They liked calling me Wendy Whiner and would start riffing off that old Saturday Night Live skit with that horrible whining family. It drove me out of my mind. But it worked. I learned that whining is only good in the same way shrieking is good - getting what you want from people who will do anything to get you to shut up. I also remember when I went through the early teen eye rolling phase. Mom liked to grab my arm and ask Dad for a quarter to put in my ear to see if they could win - implying I was a slot machine. This, of course, made me want to roll my eyes even more which caused more slot machine jokes until I wanted to cry. But, I actually started making a concerted effort to NOT EVER roll my eyes. To this day I'm not a big eye roller. I get my contempt out with snarking and cattiness. Don't know if that's actually such a good thing come to think of it... But I guess the mocking thing worked well for them. I'll probably torture my children with it some day. No whining and eye rolling in MY household.

Actually... when I worked for a day care center in college I enforced a strict no whining policy. If one of the kids would whine at me, I would tell them "No Whining" and wouldn't listen until they talked to me normally. I kinda figured this wasn't really sinking in much as these were 3-5 year olds I was working with. But then one day I was over dealing with something when I heard Kid A whining to her friend, Kid B. Kid B stopped Kid A in her tracks and promptly said "No Whining!". Kept repeating it too. Like I did. Heh. Cracked me up. His parents probably hate me. Still.