New Testingstan

Jarhead.

timmy wrote:My kids got a shit deal being born to me and their mother.

This got me thinking. I had what worked out to be a crappy deal with parentage. If some had been reported to DOCS, it would have resulted in a few concerned visits.

But I was never cognisant of that. I was a pretty happy little dude. I just assumed it was all normal.

So how many with bad deals are cognisant of it?

Gands wrote:

timmy wrote:My kids got a shit deal being born to me and their mother.

This got me thinking. I had what worked out to be a crappy deal with parentage. If some had been reported to DOCS, it would have resulted in a few concerned visits.

But I was never cognisant of that. I was a pretty happy little dude. I just assumed it was all normal.

So how many with bad deals are cognisant of it?

I think it's something you're more likely to notice when you've only got one parent at home. Or at least become aware of it sooner than you otherwise might.

You know I've pretty much sworn not to have Kids because I think i'd be a terrible father. Is that horrible of me?

My son says I'm not a bad father but he's 11. He may not realise until he's my age. Or maybe I'm not and I just punish myself.

Darksi4190 wrote:You know I've pretty much sworn not to have Kids because I think i'd be a terrible father. Is that horrible of me?

No. There's no kid quota or anything.

Zod wrote:I think it's something you're more likely to notice when you've only got one parent at home. Or at least become aware of it sooner than you otherwise might.

From about ten I had the one parent. But I just assumed it was normal. Mum was drinking up (among other more illicit things) to hide how much Dad hurt her, but I just assumed everyone's parents were like that.

I know kids who's parents deal dope out of the house, i can't imagine how that will turn out.

Yeah. I never saw it dealt, but it was grown in house by my uncle when he moved in.

Aaron wrote:I know kids who's parents deal dope out of the house, i can't imagine how that will turn out.

I can. In 16 years the kids will be dealing dope.

Man every time I think my parents gave me tons of shit, I hear stories like this, and i'm like "maybe I didn't have it so bad."

I mean sure they divorced when I was ten and that was rather traumatic, but I got over it. My dad stayed around when he could've left, hell even my stepmom genuinely cares about me. So I guess you could say I got an extra parent out of the deal. Though it was rough between me and her for a while after they got married.

Flagg wrote:

Aaron wrote:I know kids who's parents deal dope out of the house, i can't imagine how that will turn out.

I can. In 16 years the kids will be dealing dope.

Good point.

My eldest daughter knows that something's not quite right with her mother, and has cottoned on to the fact that life at my place is closer to 'normal' than at their mother's house. Her brother, a few years younger, will go to the wall for his mother and will often ask if he can skip nights with me to stay with her.

And the household I grew up in? I thought it was all perfectly normal. Outsiders probably did too. Then starting from the age of 12 the illusion began to crumble. This sped up as I hit young adulthood and by the age of 22 the concept was utterly destroyed.

Aaron wrote:My son says I'm not a bad father but he's 11. He may not realise until he's my age. Or maybe I'm not and I just punish myself.

i've got pretty limited data from your house but from talking to you and val you seem like a better father than i ever had and i've taken at least one lesson from you

and it's not a "what not to do" thing either so don't worry man

Lol, what's the lesson?

I just edited down the longest post I'd ever written into this sentence: My father wanted a sports playing engineer, essentially an improved version of himself. He got me, and didn't get that a square peg will not be forced into a round hole with ease.

Thanks to my awesome memory, I remember every look of disappointment, every time he told his friends about what a disappointment I was, and every time they forgot about me. With me at home, I always assumed that was why he went elsewhere for family.

Sorry for the weird hijack, but I couldn't let that sit in my head.

Your dad was a dick. Mine was worse. Let's all drink to my dad being dead as shit!

I was the unwanted surprise from my dad's fling with my mom, presumably while he was still married. Yay?

My wife and I live by the adage that every generation fucks up their kids in a new way. We'll both be so worried about not repeating the mistakes of our parents that we'll no doubt do something that ends up being looked on as, you hope, absurd and not terrible.

Zod wrote:I was the unwanted surprise from my dad's fling with my mom, presumably while he was still married. Yay?

For years I assumed I was the product of rape.

My dad already had a broken marriage and two kids when my parents had me. He ended up leaving /getting booted when I was about 10, and proved to be a complete disappointment after that (never turned up for promised events etc).

That said, my mother is also crazy and has done her fair share of damage. But hey, at least she fucking tried. And since becoming a grandmother she's mellowed way out, but become crazier in slightly adorable but still crazy grandmother ways.

The best story about my dad? When I found out he'd brought my half-brother out from Canada to live with him for a year or so. I found this out because someone at school met him at a party and mentioned to me what a coincidence it was to have two people from Canada with the same surname in a small city in Tassie. He'd apparently been here for months already and though my dad lived about 2000m away, I hadn't seen him in a year or more and so this was really a nice family moment for me.

man my parents are and were awesome

sorry guys

Upon reflection, my parents are why I'm so nuts about TV.

It was all I had when we were moving from city to city. When I was perpetually the new guy, TV was the constant. When the family crumbled, mum discovered alcohol and anger, and dad derailed parties talking about how much potential I've wasted, I hid in television. Needless to say, I was pretty socially I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP. Luckily, I had some patient friends who encouraged me a little, except when they lost patience and got angry with me for not getting them. Best vicious circle ever.

The best story of my dad is when I was 12 and he stopped paying child support so my mom called the state of Texas to force him to start paying and we found out he was in prison for raping his 12 and 7 year old stepdaughters, one of whom was mentally handicapped. Oh, and he went to jail because he bragged about it.

Fffffuuuuuu