you know, parents are the same, no matter time nor place. growing up, parents set out curfews, ground rules, allowances, guidelines, groundings and expectations. i never considered my parents all that strict because by the time i wanted to go out and do stuff, they had already been broken in by george and her shenanigans. i spent most of my high school life puttering around, playing in my community, watching movies, doing lots of swimming, tree climbing and other wholesome as apple pie experiences. did i say high school? i meant middle school. um, i meant elementary school. shite. i have no idea what i did in high school, but i know it was wholesome.



our parents had this unwritten policy to make sure we had all the same rules. if george's curfew was extended, mine was extended, even if i never needed it. if george fought tooth and nail for some privilege (like dating or going out late) i got it too, even if i never even whiffed dating or going out late. they were trying to maintain a blind eye towards age and gender, and give us the same ground rules regardless of which one of us brought about the rule changes. so pretty much, by the time i was ready to go venturing out into the world, they were cool relaxed chill parents.



most other kids i knew had parents that were pretty strict. typical of course. kids who couldn't do this, couldn't do that. couldn't breath hard after five pm, had to call home every six minutes, do their homework before going out to play, ask permissoin to pee, all that character building stuff. but then as you get older, all these restrictions relax and you can pee freely anywhere and anytime you want. and then you go off to college, you move away from home and you are as free as a bird. and just as light hopefully.



but what happens when you move back home (as the majority of the people i know from san diego have done)? do the old rules and regulations apply? are you an independent adult or still under the authoritarian rule of your parents? living at home post-college is so strange. i feel like everyone woulda scoffed in high school if somebody said "oh yeah, after graduating, i'm moving back home to kick it with my parents." but now it's so common. i feel like it's not even a negative anymore, it's just a fact of crappy economy life. they used to say that living at home was dating anathema but since i am, in general, dating anathema, i can't really break it down to specifics like that.



but the big question, as posed over this past weekend, is how much do you have to put up with when you move back home? sure you can respect your parents by letting them know where you are, how you are, who you're hanging out with, but is it really necessary? after all, we are not in high school anymore. when we hang out, there is always one person, if not two, who gets a phone call and they start to get a pained look on their face, an urgent tone to their voice. they bust out in some native tongue and then quickly get off the phone with a few quick "okay, okay, okay. bye."



it sucks to live at home. it's great for the food and the saved rent money and in my case, overall survival, but that line between being grown up and being a kid is hard to define. one way of thinking goes that we should be more mature and respect and understand where our parents are coming from. we are no longer kids after all, who need to rebel and pout and slam doors. however, many times parents start to treat you as if you were sixteen again. constantly checking up on you, admonishing you, annoying you. but this is the last chance that we'll have to interact with our parents on a daily basis. and i suppose, if i were sane and a better person, i would see it as such. but it's hard to get the kid versus parent mentality out of my head. it would probably help to cease thinking like a child i suppose. ah, always back to square one. always.