Parental Embarrassment

[djacq75]

Originally Posted by sycamore

At Xmas time, I was coming out of the bathroom, and my Mom asked if I had sprayed air freshener, because she thought I had taken a number 2. She asked this in front of 10 or so relatives. My mom didn't think it was a big deal, but my my one aunt and I thought otherwise.

That's the sort of thing my mother loved to do, as well. "Did you stink it up?" was her usual query.

[Iggy]

I have a good one.

When I was a sophomore in high school my dad was fixing up a car. It was a 1960 Austin Healey Sprite. Really little car, it felt like a tin can when you rode along in it. It would have been really cool, except he had just rebuilt it and it was pretty scruffy looking and bright orange.

Well one day he decided to drive me to school in the Austin Healey. He had just got it running that weekend and wanted to take it for a test drive. Bad idea. It was fine until we got up to the school. Then the front drivers side wheel came off. Completely. Rim, rubber tire and all. Right in front of the school. I could have died...

He managed to coast on 3 wheels into one of the parking spots on the street in front of the school. I grabbed my stuff and bolted to the door without further ado.

When I got home that evening, my dad told me that he had 3 teachers lift the car (it was that light and since he didn't have a car jack) and put the wheel back on to drive home. Apparently he hadn't tightened it enough when he put the wheels on in the days before. He laughed at the way I ran for the door as soon as the car had stopped. But can you blame me?

Here is what it looked like, but keep in mind, it was bright orange.

[mrnoodle]

There was a girl I had a huge crush on in high school. I finally got the nerve to call her one day, and her dad answered. I asked if she was there, and he said "She can't come right now, she's having a bowel movement."

I never hooked up with her, and I never told her about that. I probably should have.

[wolf]

Dad was just separating the wheat from the chaff.

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by wolf

See you and raise you.

My mother worked as a secretary in the Guidance Office of my high school. Confidentiality? What's that?

I can see that and raise you to the limit. My momster ran both the bookstore and the cafeteria at the college I attended.

Actually, the only reason I agreed to go to North Carolina Wesleyan College was that because she worked there I was able to get quite a discount as a "day student" while my family agreed to save money to send me to the University of Colorado at Boulder, which was where I really wanted to go but out-of-state tuition was obscenely high. That meant the momster still had full control over what I wore, my hair, music, friends, driving, even what time I got up and went to bed. It wasn't bad enough that I had to go to a home-town Methodist college which specialized in training ministers, I had to see her every day, all day, and of course all the other faculty and staff watched my every move and reported back to her as only Southerners can: "Well, I don't know if I should really tell you this, but did you know your daughter cut her Biology class today and was out on the Quad with that awful Jewish boy? It's such a shame..."

To top it off, the year she managed the Cafeteria (while they were recruiting a professional manager but had not yet been successful) the quality of food hit an all-time low and there were a lot of student complaints. I began carrying a paper bag of spices - garlic salt and Seasoning Salt were my favorites - to load up what they served to the point where you could no longer taste how tasteless it was. I'll admit that it wasn't so much the momster's "fault" that the food was bad as that she had no experience whatever at this but had been drafted to fill in because she was the President of the college's secretary, but it still got blamed on me by association. Plus I had to cringe in mortal embarassment everytime I went through the serving line, never knowing what had been reported to her about me that day on one hand and hearing the rather nasty gripes from the rest of the students on the other.

After nearly a year of spending every day and night of my life with the momster things were at the breaking point, but I found a way to turn the tables on her. I went to the Dean of Women Students and told him that if I couldn't get a work grant so that I could move into the dorm I was going to kill myself because my mother never let me have any privacy and was micromanaging every breath I took. I really poured it on, because I knew that he COULDN'T tell everybody about it. He agreed to talk to the momster, who also had to back down and let me go to the dorm, because SHE didn't dare let the word get around. So my life finally began when I was 18 and managed to "run away from home" at least a few miles from my family, at least for part of the day. I finally started growing up, I finally had my first date, and a lot of other firsts. And I finally got to the University of Colorado and never looked back again.

[Kozmique]

My dad never did anything that wasn't embarrassing. He used to hand out "grammar police" tickets to strangers who weren't even talking to him. He also used to fart and then evaluate the smell ie. "That wasn't bad, actually it was quite pleasant." In public. Once we were at the museum and I was about to say something I'd recently learned, he let out a really loud one right as I was saying "I heard that..." and he said "I didn't!" There were lots of people around too. He was morbidly obese long before it was an epidemic. He would go out wearing shorts, a way too-tight T-shirt, long black dress socks, and sandals. Once when I was of drinking age he showed up at the bar I was a regular at, wearing only one shoe. He said it was because he was swimming in the ocean during a storm and got dashed against some rocks, and lost part of his big toe. He managed to get the email of one of the other regulars and then continually spammed her and also told her a lot of personal info about me & my family. Then he disappeared for a month and when he turned up wouldn't tell anyone where he had been. Strange guy. I rarely talk to him anymore. Every one of my friends who has ever met him has some kind of bizarre story to tell.

[York]

I cant really come up with a story about myself but my mother told me one about my brother! He was still a baby when he got sick one day... The day before my dad was busy redecorating and painting the house! My brother had been watching very closely with full intrest! He s room had been done a coupple days before so it wasnt the smell of paint or something like that! But in that morning he didnt feel well.... So my mom had put him to bed and called the doctor...By noon he arrived...He noticed the redecorations immediatly and told my mom it looked great...She was proud and showed him the kitchen and hall...They went up to my bro and when she got in the room there was a terrible smell and some free-hand painting on the wall!
He had been grabbing in his own diaper because suddenly there was so much in it! As he was standing there, feeling much better and very proud....
Offcourse my mom was a bit embaressed....