"Actually, it’s a buck and a quarter quarter-staff ...

but I'm not telling him that." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyTEH95_vNo

I was thinking of naming this "Parents Just Don't Understand" but I really like the idea of having the secret weapon of a "buck-and-a-quarter quarter-staff" up my sleeve instead.

Ahhhhhhhhhh parents. Ya' get the ones you're born with and then they don't lose their minds quickly enough for you to move them into a retirement home when they're not looking, eh? Or, ya' tell them that you're making some significant life changes because you want to grow into the responsible human being that they were trying to raise all along - and they tell you "that's great, Honey" meanwhile they're cutting you off at the knees.

But here's the thing - because they're your folks (and this, of course, depends totally on how you were raised, I think), you really do need to believe that they honestly have your best interests at heart. Are there really bad, nasty parents out there? Of course there are. Ya' don't have to pass a test to become a parent - pretty much the only test involves some version of peeing on an indicator stick. But if you don't think that your parents have your best interests in their actions, then you probably should have run away when you were nine years old. Or maybe you really were found on their doorstep. (You really don't resemble anyone in the family album, yanno?)

So, if you're goofy enough to share to your friends about stuff that your parents do in the name of said "support", and you don't freak out, but your friends are mortified? Welllll they're your parents, not the parents of your friends. My parents aren't *yours*. Trust me on this - your parents are extremely screwed up in THEIR very own unique little ways. I mean really - have you taken a good look at the family album? Honestly! Get the hell back home to your own glass house and stop leaving your grubby little fingerprints all over mine. Geez, where's the Windex?

If you had my parents, you'd react differently to all kinds of crap, I'm sure. But see - you wouldn't have been properly prepared. I've had my parents for a lot o' years now. So ok, this may seem broken and nasty from the outside looking in (great Oingo-Boingo song, by the way), but it's not new to me. I'm more than ready to take a deep breath and smile pleasantly through whatever is tossed at me in the name of love. I can even accept it graciously. I've been in training for a long damn time. I'm not muttering "of course you know this means war" under my breath at all. This is more like "Marco Polo". In a wading pool. With a posted lifeguard. And water wings.

Wanna know what MY secret weapon is?
There are things that can be altered, renamed, removed, changed, edited, closed, adjusted, deleted, cancelled, tweaked or otherwise modified ... but those are just "things". And at it turns out, I've been accidentally growing less and less fond of "things" for quite awhile now. "Things" come and go. "Things" are borrowed for a length of time that we sometimes know and we sometimes don't, and then "things" go elsewhere. "Things" are bought and sold. "Things" exchange hands allllll day long. "Things" get lost. "Things" get destroyed. "Things" go away.

So I'll go ahead and let my parents do their "thing", but it doesn't stop me from doing mine because my secret weapon is not a "thing". It's not a tangible. And it doesn't "belong" to any one person to alter, rename, remove, change, etc.

It is belief. It is hope. It is faith. It is trust. It is knowledge. And it provides to me all that I may require.

Now then ... ho, ha ha, guard, turn, parry, dodge, spin, ha, thrust ...