My Parents Made Me Paranoid (And I Thank Them)

I was adopted, ancient history, but to say I didn't inherit anything from mom and dad would be a mistake.


I have never touched a public toilet-flusher handle with anything but the bottom of my shoe! As a grown ass man, I'll teeter with one foot in the air trying to flush the things the way dad showed me when I was barely old enough to clear the top of the kiddie urinal. I can probably count on slipping in a puddle of urine when I'm 70 years old and breaking my hip, but for now, dad's legacy has kept my hands herpes free my whole life! And yes, I showed the boy the dance too, but the girl was on her own. I don't know how women flush toilets, but I don't hold hands with them either!


I have never operated a mower barefooted. Nightmarish images of me hobbling back to school after a summer time accident on a bandaged stump kept me from pushing a 22 incher around the yard without shoes. Dad also taught me to flinch when someone wheels by on a mower with the exhaust chute pointed at me just in case that someone rolls over a rock, baby bunny, or box turtle. I always 180 my ass to the mower in that eyeball-saving swish that makes me feel safe, but look touched in the head.


It's a bad enough phobia that I make my son wear shoes when he mows, even though he gets to sit his scrawny ass on a riding mower. Luckily, he doesn't mind, and he needs the extra weight anyway because he is so light that the dead man's switch in the seat sometimes breaks the circuit when he bounces around making my green machine backfire and everyone outside turn their heads towards his general direction.


Also, I won't do a lick of work on Sunday...which I inherited from my dad who'd frown at a neighbour that'd mow his yard on a Sunday morning...or blow leaves. I remember my neighbour who got up one warm and sunny Easter morning to mow while me, my wife and our young children hunted for plastic, candy-filled eggs to the drone of the asshole-go-round-the-yard. I was livid, and the only thing that kept me from putting a .308 round through his engine block was my fear of being someone's bitch underneath the Sheriff's Department.


Of course, I'm averted from doing work around the house most any day, but Sunday is the one day I can loaf, or ditch the family completely guilt free, and someday, when the powers that be let us hunt on that day, I'll keep it holy with that incessant need to get up before dawn, drive 20 miles, pack in 15 pounds of gear to sit on my ass for four hours or walk around with a shotgun all day through briers and yellow jackets for a shot at one stupid bird...yeah, that Sunday thing'll work out even better someday.


I reckon the last fun thing I'll mention is the need to keep every thing that I have ever owned because some day, I might need the botched and broken and worthless piece of decades-stored junk for the parts if nothing else. Wade through the attic, my closet, my garage and you'll see what I mean. Need a screw for your Makita 5007, 7 1/4" circular saw? How about the screws that came with our mini-blinds that I didn't use because they suck (why do I still have them then? I don't know). How about a Gott Water-Cooler with no lid, or a RubberMade Water-Cooler lid with no cooler? I have you covered.


Sometimes I take someone else's junk just to keep my reserve of garbage up for the coming apocalypse when, to fight off hordes of blood-crazed zombies, we'll have to throw thousands of empty shotgun shells at them to stop them--or old hammers, or sledgehammer heads without handles. (I got alot of those.) It might be the weirdest thing I inherited from dad. I don't know how mom put up with it frankly, but thankfully for me, my wife's insane too, keeping potting soil until it turns to dust, and fertilizer until it turns to stone.


Lastly, I inherited a fear of vacations. Not of hitting the road and seeing people and places, but the preparation for the trip. Getting ready to go somewhere drove my mom bonkers, and it was best to let her have her way with the station wagon than to get that rare pop. And now I too become a fist-clenching not-so-silent sufferer that completely understands why rats will eat their young when the nest is a little too crowded. Make your nest a four door sedan for a few hours, with the view of the back glass blocked by a month's worth of supplies, and you better have some Haldol.


SO, I reckon I can thank my parents for all these behaviours that'll probably make it down into the kids' "nurture" DNA strands. Hopefully, like me, they'll be able to drop some as needed. One I dropped was the need to "fix" stuff without actually buying replacement parts--think coat hanger/duct tape--or the desire to "build" stuff out of scrap paper, cardboard, and wood and use it in my home. I'm all for doing it right, with the right parts. And If I need shelves, I'll buy fresh, new planks and make them myself--naturally keeping all the scraps in the crawl space for later because...you just never know.