Again!!!!! Still premature but...
would you look at these amazing powers of recovery, back for third attempt!!!

You love it you b3ta bitches!!!
(anon_is_best, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 15:00, Reply)

PJM
Maybe... You're the really annoying relative/grandparent that the kids have been bribed/threatened to appease.
(StumpsForArms&NoEyebrows, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 14:39, Reply)

my old man
was a mean old prick.
Always wore black, spoke in a husky voice and spent more time with his beloved death star, than with my sister Leia and I.

regards
Luke S
(Handel blah blah blah, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 14:13, Reply)

I'll show the c*nts
My parents were so strict that they would not let me post an answer to the question of the week until they had read through all the other answers. This means that as my parents can never tell if the last answer IS actually the last answer because they never know when the new question of the week is going to appear and if there is time for a other answer to appear, and if it will be suitable for me to post my answer directly after what possibly could be the penultimate answer. They also worry that if I post my answer any earlier in the week I may have a very small chance of a appearing on the front page if people click “I like this “button, however unlikely this may be, because usually my answerers are just long winded ramblings containing the over use of the word “answer”, poor punctuation and the word “cunt” in the title.
Luckily, I drugged my parents last night locked them in my cellar with only a bag of dog eggs to eat. Now I can live freely, post when I want and prove them wrong with this weeks answer. Cunts.
(Jeeves, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 14:01, Reply)

Damn, still premature....
... but at least I managed it twice!!!
(anon_is_best, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 13:44, Reply)

Children's books
When I was growing up my parents always encouraged me to read.....in fact before I was a teenager my dad and I used to share books - I'd finish the latest Stephen King and pass it on to him and vice versa....

My parents' attitude was that if you're capable of reading it and understanding it, then get on with it....Frightened the nuns mind you....But I borrowed Lady Chatterly from the convent library....
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 13:23, Reply)

vasectomy? lobotomy?
apparantly there's a high correlation with vasectomy and a form of altzimers, so if you're lucky frankspencer, the one will remove the need for the other
(skankgirl, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 13:12, Reply)

Strict uncle
I often get to spend time with my nieces, aged seven and ten respectively. I'm terrible... I'm always telling them "Don't do that!" or "If you hit your sister one more time I'm taking you straight home" and generally keeping them in line.

The bizarre thing is however that whenever I see them they come bounding up to me and fling their arms round me, like they're actually pleased that their strict uncle is coming over to boss them about! I can't figure that one out. I can't do baby talk without feeling like a pillock, so have always avoided it. As a result I've only moderated my swearing and any off limit topics but I talk to them as I would anyone else. However, this usually entails me telling them what they can and can't do.

You'd think they'd hate the sight of me by now....
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 15 Mar 2007, 12:40, Reply)

Adults can have strange ideas about what kids're allowed to read.
My elder daugher was reading the novelised version of 'Twin Peaks' and made the mistake of taking it to school, where it was spotted by a teacher.

It was confiscated and I had a letter home, asking me to come in and discuss this serious matter. I went because they wouldn't give her the book back and I had to collect it myself.

I was asked if I knew that she had been reading this 'unsuitable' book.
Yes, I said, I bought it and read it first. What she reads is up to her, and none of your business.

They must have thought I was as big a control freak as they were. Cheeky bastards.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 12:24, Reply)

Master
My master was so strict, she wouldn't let me - Oh, wait, hang on - wrong kind of strict....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 12:11, Reply)

Frankspencer
Vasectomy? I'd recommend a lobotomy.
(BringOutYourDead Bi-polar, the sexually adventurous bear, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 11:51, Reply)

My parents were never that strict....
.. with me, but if i crossed the line I'd get a good horse cropping when my father got home.

Problem was if me and my brother had both stored up a horse cropping it could go on for some considerable time. Becuase as he was getting bent over my father's knee and cropped, I'd be laughing. Then, when it was my turn to get hit, my brother would start laughing, which meant that he would get another cropping which I wouldn't be able not to laugh at, which would mean me getting another go which my brother would laugh at.....etc..etc..etc...

I can remember one instance when this repeated at least 5 times.

But my parents weren't really that strict, in fact they were really supportive of most of what my brother and me got up to, well the stuff they knew about anyway!

With my own three kids I like to think I've trained them to understand the 3 strikes and you're out system. I tell them to do what I want three times, the tone changes and rises each time so they know I'm not mucking about. Then , if they are still refusing to obey it's no holds barred and an unpleasant experience hits them like a thunderstorm, like being dragged up to their room by their arm, and I mean dragged, all the way up the bumpy staircase bouncing off the walls on the way!

Sounds harsh, and i don't like doing it, actually feel guilty as hell, but they have learned to recognise the tone and that I'm not pissing about, so after using the 3 strikes and you're out only a couple of times they learn that they can dick around and enjoy themselves, but they also know when they are starting to push it and to calm down when told! Seems to have worked, my kids are the best kids in the world!

Unlike most other kids you see out and about where they're running around, being obnoxious and rude and refusing to do anything anybody is telling them, especially their parents. I tell you, if it was up to me the parents of these children would be taught the 3 strikes rule...by using the 3 strike rule on them!!!

Bah humbug!

Bring back corporal punishment...never did me any harm!!!

How old I am sounding, jees!
(anon_is_best, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 10:50, Reply)

Winston Smith
I've been reminded who he is - My brain is refusing to fire this morning and it reas as 2 random words as opposed to a name.

Edit - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Feck.

And thank you all for reminding me that I am, above all, an eejit :-)
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 10:10, Reply)

Rules for kids
I have decided on the following:

1) No birthdays until they are at least five. They won't remember anything before that.
2) Boys to receive lessons in female anatomy, complete with detailed images; girls to be taught self-defence and kung fu.
3) Persistent crying of babies will be dealt with by locking them in a soundproof room until they learn to be quiet (my mother did this to me and look how turned out).
4) I will not hit them. Psychological weapons are more deadly: fear paranoia, envy etc.
5) They will not go to university. It's a total waste of time and encourages a prolonged adolescence.
6) They will not get pocket money - they can work for a living and learn from an early age that they can never have enough.
7) I will not cosset them - they should learn from an early age that life is shit and no one cares.
8) I don't dare if they perform well in sports at school - the top sportsmen at my school turned out to be morons.
9) They can drink and take mild drugs if they like, but if they abuse these I will post pictures of them on the Net sleeping in their own vomit.
10) They will be quiet. I hate noise.

My wife has advised me to have a vasectomy.
(frankspencer, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 10:06, Reply)

Um
My son's 2 next month - and he still hasn't had any sweeties. Mwahahahaha.

Ok, well, he's had cake. But no crisps or rubbish chocolate (Green and Blacks thank you)

Actually, he'd rather have a banana....

Ed: Who's Winston Smith - I don't get it
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 10:04, Reply)

Wooo hooo - first post....
..oh hang on, no sorry!!!

Premature as ever!
(anon_is_best, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 10:01, Reply)

apeloverage
thats the first time i've been amused by something you've written. maybe you've turned a corner?
(Clashrock is being stalked by his brother on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 9:43, Reply)

my family's pretty dysfunctional

My big brother made me break up with my girlfriend - partly because she was 'common' (I was only a low grade public servant ffs), partly because she encouraged me to think for myself.

Then, he knows I have a phobia of rats, and he deliberately kept talking about rats eating my face.

Still, in the end I love my big brother.

signed,
Winston Smith.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 9:34, Reply)

Scared of motorbikes
When i was younger, i had a 50cc mini bike. this was 25 years ago and i was really really chuffed with it. although i could not ride it as i was 5. (i couldn't ride a push bike til i was 7).

My grandad had some bikes (old BSA) and my uncle was a proper biker, 1000cc+ Laverda and made his own choppers (now a fully fledged welder and Blacksmith with a forge)

Ultimately cool and wanting to follow in the footsteps i also wanted one until my mums friend who was a psychic told me i was due a motorbike accident when i started to ride one. Not fatal, but very painful.

Since then i shit it about bikes. So insidious was her warning that nearly 20 years later i cannot shake it. I have loads of mates with bikes and one day they are going to ask me if i want to go out on the pillion. I will have to decline knowing i am still plagued.


Irrational fear implanted for life. I will never happily ride a motorbike.
( bazza van der trance , ooh baby baby, baby baby. Get up on this., Thu 15 Mar 2007, 9:24, Reply)

ya har..
and I didn't give me daughter any sweeties until she was a year old...yar haaaar....
(pix e, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 8:53, Reply)

television....
going out, having fun like any other normal human....and the telly...remember the good old black and white old days?
(pix e, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 8:52, Reply)

My Mummy
Mummy banned me from sewing my wild oats and instead wanted me to keep it within our extended family, that pretty much meant that I had to ditch (*cough* and have killed*cough*) the stunner I was married to, and instead shack up with a moose.

On top of that, she just won't die and let me become king for a bit, she has even banned me from talking the help into smothering her in her sleep.
( BulldogUgly Visit my profile to see what's between my legs, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 8:48, Reply)

my Mum

literally and actually really said that the Doors' version of 'Light My Fire' was good, but "not as good as the original" (ie the version by Jose Feliciano).
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 8:35, Reply)

Not our Mum
But one of my primary school teachers. Mental woman spent half a term trying to convince my mother that it was bad for her darling daughter to read horror books.

To explain; at the age of 10/11 in our school we had to read a book a week and keep a diary of what we'd read for them to monitor us. Now while I was reading shitty point!Horror books that one might object to on grounds of linguistic merit/them being pish, I was also reading classic horror (think Frankenstein and Heart of darkness) which is about as frightening as a mouldy sock. Morbid child that I was, it wasn't like I was sacrificing goats in class.

This resulted in letters, meetings with my mother to check that it was acceptable, and then still acceptable half a year later, and wasn't she worried about the undue influence they might have on a developing mind.

Now while my Mum just laughed, I do wonder how many parents she managed to convince that their offspring were being warped by the evil books written about vampires and zombies.

I wonder what the mad bint makes of emos.
(greenycrimson I stole the from pyschotherapist, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 8:29, Reply)

Ok, keeping my promise now.
Thanks to Che for posting a serious story which echoes my own (well, mine echoes it I suppose, I am considerably younger than the illustrious Mrs Grimsdale) enough that I won't be tempted to post it.

Suffice to say my parents are both out-and-out mentalists in their own little ways, but both still exhibit classic 'silly parent' hallmarks on occasion- so it is with this in mind that I present a story that may have come from a normal person.

Several of my earliest memories regard being bollocked about the quality of the artwork that I brought home from playgroup and preschool (aged two and a half onwards, I believe).

My father sternly reiterated, over and over, yelling if necessary, that:
-You don't mix colours up in the same area.
-You colour inside the lines only.
-All brush/texta/crayon/pencil strokes should be going IN THE SAME DIRECTION.
-All colours must be realistic real-life representations (I remember discovering a greylead pencil while colouring once and thinking it was the most special thing ever- it was SILVER. So I saved it up and coloured in Tinkerbell with it- as a pretty fairy I figured she deserved this special colour. I believe that that effort actually earnt me a smack).

I really struggled in high school art when we were learning about creating texture and shade by crosshatching and other NON PARALLEL penstroke methods...my little brain just couldn't handle it for the first few months and I lost marks on several ostensibly easy pieces of work because I just couldn't make my hand do it....

:O
(Angie the Redneck Wonder, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 7:30, Reply)

Gleeball reminded me....
.....when i got back from Uni one Xmas (200 miles from home) i pulled into the driveway and instead of the 2 or 3 cars i was expecting (mum, dad and bro) there were none, an inexplicable lack of lights or signs of life at all in the house.

This was in the days before mobile phones so i went to my mates house to find my parents had moved and "forgotten" to tell me.

They'd kept the same phone number and the local postman had continued to deliver mail that was addressed to them to the new house as was the way in a village where everybody knew each other, you could leave you doors unlocked unless there were pikeys living up one of the farm tracks, blah, blah.

When i eventually tracked them down to my grandparents house (they'd died the previous summer and we were trying to sell one of the two houses we now had), i found they'd moved house cause they preferred the other one despite the lack of enough bedrooms for 4 kids to have our own anymore.

Their solution? Force my two youger sisters to share a room and allow me one? No, they bought me a battered old caravan and stuck it in the garden, as i said it was Xmas and bloody freezing, though they did provide me with two duvets.

And then on Xmas day, after being "home" for two weeks, while everybody was opening more traditional presents i was presented with an electric radiator for the caravan.

And to this day i'm sure that was only because my response to being forced to sleep in the freezing cold was to go to the pub every night and drink until they chucked out and i was immune to the cold....

Though it all worked out ok in the end, they sold the bigger house which meant my inheritance was more substantial. I got my own back by not spending the money on my own house a few years later (as i was supposed to) and in fact sinking £12k into modifying my beloved Mark 2 Golf GTi so that it was so fast "it sends a shiver down my spine you drive that thing so fast" according to my mother.

"you should have felt the shivers i had when you made me live in the garden" was my response.
(wesimmo, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 6:39, Reply)

Story in today's press
www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/14/father.dies.ap/index.html

A 6-year-old boy stayed in an apartment with the body of his father for two days after the man died on their sofa, obeying instructions to never leave without permission, firefighters said.

The boy, whose name was not released, didn't want to leave even after firefighters arrived, fearing punishment if he left, fire department Maj. Noble Lee said.

"He wasn't as distraught as one might think," Lee said. "I don't think he understands the gravity of the past few days. He wasn't as upset at the situation as he was about being outside the residence without permission."
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 6:26, Reply)

inflatable

you should've really upset them and got a Vespa.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 5:21, Reply)

parents so strict I wasn't bullied
My mother was insanely strict - certain commercial television channels were off-limits, ALL american television was off-limits and I was not allowed coffee, chips, sweets, to wear any black, to have friends over, to get dirty, to stay up late or to generally have a normal childhood.

But the one that takes the cake is when we moved to a state in Australia where schools did not have uniforms. My mother was having none of this and actually made my sister and I uniforms at home that we had to wear to school every day. These consisted of collared, long sleeved white shirts and a plain blue skirt, knee-length of course.

I'm surprised I wasn't bullied more often. I think some of the kids at my school considered it, took a good look at what I had to wear every day and decided I'd suffered enough. It's a wonder I turned a relatively normal person, although the years of therapy have helped a lot...!

Edit: Oh and no make up, no pierced ears (they were 'common') and I wasn't allowed to grow my hair long until I was 12 (which led to 12 years of 'hello lad' from old people). Who forces a young girl to have boy hair? My mum that's who.
(blu-k, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 3:20, Reply)

Monster Munch...
This is an odd one.

My parents were always fairly laid back, they didn't mind me staying out late as long as they knew where I was, didn't mind me drinking a bit before I was 18, were just generally cool.

Except for whenever I was younger, for some reason, my mother took a notion that neither myself or my two brothers should ever eat Monster Munch crisps. Why? Because they contained dreaded 'e-numbers', which some piece of hysterical literature she'd come across said they fuck you up.

Needless to say, soon enough this came up in conversation with friends, who mocked me relentlessly for it. In fact, it still comes up from time to time, despite maybe 8 years having passed, usually when one of them is eating Monster Munch. Bastards.
(wraithUK, Thu 15 Mar 2007, 0:04, Reply)