Sunday, November 20, 2005

Rules the Chaliceparents imposed that I still think are kind of stupid today

A service to the kids of today

1. You can own computer games for the PC and watch lots of TV, but you can’t have a Nintendo. It will make you anti-social, despite the kids you see playing them together.
2. You can’t have a Walkman. It also will make you anti-social, despite the fact that all the kids with lots of friends have one.
3. You’re not allowed to watch Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. There was just something disturbing about that show.
4. You’re also not allowed to watch The Simpsons, though this rule was relaxed sometime in high school.
5. No magazines, except certain educational ones. Highlights and then 3-2-1 Contact were OK. But the Consumer Reports magazine for kids wasn’t for some reason. Fashion magazines when I got older were also out.
6. The ChaliceMom, a sweet person who likes things like bright colors and bold patterns, must approve all clothing purchases. My mother quite literally dressed me funny.
7. Family vacations must include many, many posed pictures of mother and children taken by the ChaliceDad. I remember these sessions as very unpleasant and at my wedding asked for minimal posed photographs and tons of candids, which produced amazing results, particularly since the CSO and I had hired a former AP news photographer. My mother had let the picture point go, but my Aunt Barbara was so lost by the lack of structure that she actually started organizing her own posed photos and pulling the photographer over to take them. So my wedding pictures have a couple hundred shots of my friends and relations captured mid-giggle, mid-dance or mid-serious-looking-conversation, and a section in the middle that is my grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin’s husband, cousin’s children. Etc, all in a group, smiling obediently at the camera.

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