Okay, so, this rant is here in an attempt to keep me from firing off an angry letter to one of my best friend's parents.

I am in college. I am a senior in college, in fact, and so is the friend in question. We should be able to make our own decisions, right? To be our own people, live our own lives, and not have to answer to our parents for every little thing.

Because this friend doesn't really like "conventional" things. (I.E.- she'd rather wear black than pink, would rather watch a Tim Burton movie than a chick flick, hates sororities, listens to rock where the norm is contemporary Christian [the message is not a problem in and of itself - but that music is boooooooooring] and generally likes things that her parents consider "weird" (video games, roleplaying, "odd" music, etc).

Here's the catch, though. This girl's like, the perfect daughter. She's all "yes ma'am, no ma'am, I'm going to still live at home because YOU can't handle me leaving, and yes I'll go get your damn milk at the nearest store thirty minutes away even though you WORK right next door to a grocer." She either holds down a job or looks for one non-stop, rarely ever gets to hang out with us because she's being RESPONSIBLE, and is generally a good person.

Her parents give her crap for her taste ALL the time. Not to mention they treat her like a slave, and a sixteen-year-old-with-a-curfew slave at that. She catches crap (a SENIOR IN COLLEGE, mind you) for staying out until ELEVEN on a Saturday night, and gets told that she's immature, irresponsible, and basically worthless by her recently-graduated-from-high-school baby sister, who has a serious case of third-parent syndrome (and bad taste in music, but that's neither here nor there).

And tonight, I get this IM from her:

well
Constantine was coming on tv, and my sister is all "We're NOT watching that."
and the c onversation that ensues:
She says (10:03 PM):
me: But I like that movie!
mama: It's /weird/
me: But I like it.
mama: Well you're weird.
me: Yep.
mama: But you don't need to be weird, you should be normal.
me: -tilts head to one side- Well, I'm not. You'll get over it.
Bigheaded Baby Sister: Don't talk to your mother like that. (as if she were my father or something)
and then I start getting disjointed sentences from both of them that were like "you should be normal" "stop living in a fantasy world" "grow up"


She says (10:04 PM):
then later, my sister started harping at me about wearing guys' clothes
and Daddy somehow got onto a one-sided discussion of his concern for my internet addiction. : |

(name edits by me)

1. I am so sick of this eighteen year old who thinks she's forty. My friend's baby sister has told me that -I- am immature for singing aloud in the car. SINGING. She's such a little bitch with a stick up her ass that I want to yank the stick out and beat her with it.

2. What kind of parents are they, that they don't take the time to know what makes their daughter tick, and instead harp at her about jumping in line with everyone else? They want her to be ordinary...when she could be extrordinary? What the hell, guys.

3. They are all. so. arrogant. Oh my goodness. I want to burst that little purity bubble they've got around them soooooo badly.

4. I am considering speaking dork at them every time I see them. They are the kind of people who make me want to rebel in horrible, horrible ways. HERE, HAVE A THOUSAND USELESS FACTS ABOUT STAR WARS, HARRY POTTER, AND GRECO-ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.

5. I really really wish she'd move out.


-sigh-

I really want to write these people an angry letter, but for the sake of my friend, because she has asked me not to, I will not. But she needs to freaking move out, damn it. : |

-sigh more-

Thanks for listening, and to my friend - I really really love you.

Emmi

awww. you can borrow my stupidity claymore to help you resolve this issue if you'd like... *hands giant sword*
hope things get better. i know the feeling. my mom can be like that. my closefamily is very anti-fantasy/scifi/rping/videogames/etc.

tell her that perhaps she should leave them ayway so that she can be herself and not drown in depression or god knows what else.

-accepts stupidity claymore-

I will try to do it justice. Even though I do not have a lot of Long Blade skill.

Here, let me go find some idiots I can grind with. Maybe I can level up a few times. -swings claymore at unsuspecting drunk college students- XP! I NEED THE RESIDUALS!


Anyway. Tangent over.

Did I mention that said sister told my friend the following:

"You're not normal and I don't like your friends."

-sigh-

-sharpens claymore-

Firstly, literal lol @ your avatar.

Secondly, I'd LOVE to hear what this sister defines as 'normal'. Have you asked her? I watched Constantine tonight, by the way
>>
<<

I watched Constantine too... lots of NORMAL people do.

You know my answer to this but pretty much there's chocolate and vanilla for a reason. How boring would the world be if everyone was the same definition of this normal? Dont' forget that normal in society has changed a lot. Normal in 1950 is definitely abnormal in 2008 and the opposite.

If all the geniuses and creators in the world listened to their parents and became this normal, we'd have no great thinkers, paintings, novels etc.

[clutch]

I know where you are coming from. This kind of crap pisses me off so bad I want to tear my hair, scream, and then hurt people. And I mean HURT. But I'm a violent meanie head, so there you have it.

I think my biggest pet peeve in the world is parents who down on their children, especially when they have these wonderful children who any parent would be proud to have. Makes you wonder how in the world that happened. It drives me crazy! Come on people!

They probably just want her to be a carbon copy of themselves. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Makes me all the more grateful for the fact that my parents are pretty accepting. My dad tells me I'm weird and crazy all the time, but he says with love --- or just shock/horror/amazement. lol

Your friend seriously needs to get away from them. Very detrimental environment. Cookies for her for being a good child to horrible parents!

That lil sister sounds like a major biotch. Singing is immature? Are all artists immature then? What does maturity have anything to do with singing in the car?! I do it! My mom does it! Normal people might sing every now and then! She should be sent on a long trip to see the world and learn about living and how she is not as mature or as smart as she thinks.

Seriously, they think black shouldn't be used in clothes? They wanna use PINK? *vision of a blond mother with a chihuahua, pastel color mini skirt and a pink shirt* D: *horrified* They might be connecting black to anarchist movements, emo stuff and such but they should also remember that black is always in. It can bee fashionable, professional...it does with everything. I don't care about fashion....but they might. But seriously...pink, normal? Do they use everything in pastel? Major trip to the cotton candy a la my little pony land.... :sweat:

And I like Constantine!
*snicker* the Ms senior in college should watch that movie in front of her family then start to explain why she likes it by using complicated words and say things like "The art of this movie clearly has a connection to late impressionism...bla blaa and it wonderfully connects the Christian mythology to modern world..."

Thank god my parents are nor like those ones.
With the standards of those parents (and the lil sis) I would probably be an alien out to eat their ah so normal and ah so smart and mature brains.*snorts and goes back to her space ship*

Just as a little note: I am seventeen and a half and my curfew is 10pm. So 11pm for a sixteen year old is not -that- bad.

However, when put in context it totally sucks. Her parents totally suck. I understand parents having a problem with what their children do - my parents are going through the same thing because neither I or my brother know what we want to do and I don't want to finish high school. However, apart from an occasional uncontrolled remark, my parents know that I'm different and try to respect that.

BEAT THEM. Make them realise that criticising their child like that is horrible and that if they don't desist they will be forever classified as terrible people.

If my parents say something to me that I think is cruel and unnecessary I make them apologise to me. I am almost an adult and I deserve respect and to be treated as an almost-adult.

In case you missed it - the girl in question is a senior in college (21/22? Not totally certain of the US system). :p

EmmiJade - I agree, your friend really should try to move out. This sounds like a horrible situation to be in!

If she is being the perfect daughter, doing things for them etc. Maybe she should just stop. Even though it may create a little more tension to start with, hopefully it would bring up the conversation of why she is acting that way and then she can be honest with them about it.

Or she could just sit down and talk to them without her little sister there. That is a fairly mature way to handle it and maybe they would appreciate that.

^^ I agree with Kwentra :)

My parents are a little inconsistent when it comes to things like this. xD They like that I'm 'unique', but don't like that I don't really fit in well at school, because they think it upsets me.. So one minute they're being like all "Soandso is jealous of you because you have your own personality" ((Someone actually told them this after seeing my facebook, I was quite chuffed.)) and then my mother's like.. nagging me to put on all makeup and stuff, to fit in. >.< Wearing the 'usual' amount of makeup looks stupid on me, my skin's too pale and I end up looking like an oompa loompa even with the palest foundations.

Annnyway, yeah. Methinks these family members need a little talking to xD Take the sword, just in case, but only use it for emergencies. ;) xD

Oh God. This is like...the way things are with me, but much, much worse.

I have an aunt who told me that I should write "realistic" things instead of Star Wars. I think I was writing Star Wars at the time. Pfft. I didn't care about anything she said. She's old and old fashioned. I mean, the last time I went to visit her I went with her neighbor's granddaughter for a walk and we ended up going to this nearby park. Apparently my uncle, aunt, and mother all started getting worried (although my mother didn't start getting worried until my uncle did) because we were taking so long to get back. I was...seventeen at the time, AND I had been there before, AND her neighbor's granddaughter had grown up going there every summer so she KNEW where we were going. And then we passed these guys on a basketball court and mentioned it to my aunt and she asked if they tried to offer us drugs. (

And my parents...they're not against my love for fantasy movies and Star Wars and all that, but they don't understand it as much. More so my mother rather than my dad, because my dad does like some fantasy movies. And neither of them really understand my passion for writing. It's kind of weird that neither of them were even that good in English in school but I love it, which makes me wonder where I get it from.

When I was younger, I would have to deal with having a time limit on the internet, and having one phone line. And even when we had two phone lines, I'd have a time limit. It was so annoying. My father thought I was "chitty chatting." In fact, there have been times over this past year where he's thought that I just "chitty chatting." No. If I were just talking to people on IM then yeah, whatever. But when most of the time I'm doing something productive, like role playing, or making a web site, or writing, it is not just chitty chatting. And he doesn't get that.

Luckily I have never had a curfew. I didn't have many friends when I was in high school, and we -rarely- ever went out anywhere that would require us to be out past, say, midnight. It wasn't until we were older that we sort of did that kind of thing. And really, my parents have always trusted me enough to know that I'd contact them and tell them where I was going.

Honestly, it sounds like your friend needs to start out by dealing with her sister. It's NONE of her business what your friend decides to do or wear, and it's certainly not her right to tell YOU that it's immature to sing in the car. Your FRIEND is the older sister, not the other way around. Speaking from being a little sister, I would NEVER get away with being like that to my older sister, because I wouldn't be taken seriously. My sister does have a tendency of trying to be my parent, though, when she comes home. Which is extremely annoying.

And God...I definitely know how it feels to be stuck living in your parent's house (though in this case it's my father) when you're in your twenties. x.x I cannot wait until I can finally get out of this house and live on my own.

>.> Sorry, I went into my own rant there. But honestly, I would tell your friend to start off with your sister, and tell her that she has no right to try and be her mother. Mostly, your friend just needs to ignore her. It's what her parents say that matters to an extent, not what an annoying little sister says.

Your friend sounds pretty reasonable, responsible, and more level-headed that many of some of the people I know who are seniors and have been living out on their own for a few years now. Sounds to me like she would definitely be able to handle moving out and would probably thrive at it since she wouldn't constantly be belittled by her parents and her little sister.

If the only reason she is staying at home is because she thinks that her parents won't be able to handle it, then she should move out. To be blunt about it: we all have to cut the umbilical chord at some point in our lives.

Really, what is your friend going to do once she's graduated and working at a real job? Stay at home forever just because going out on her own might upset her parents? That sounds like it could turn into a situation that's more harmful for her than any kind of harm/hurt that would be caused by her moving out.

Your friend is amazing to put up with all that and still behave responsibly.

Some people don't know how good they've got it, especially in regards to her parents. My mother will KISS MY BLACK ASS if did half of the things that she does - though I'm starting to now.

That girl is living a very productive life. FAR MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN MOST OF THE NORMAL PEOPLE. Most of the "normal" girls on my college campus are chicks in sororities, mooching off of mommy and daddy's willingness to FUND THEIR EDUCATION, but go out and get shit-faced, stumbling drunk when Thursday Night rolls around. A friend of mine just came on my floor last night, falling down drunk and giggling all the while, while myself, my RA and her boyfriend are trying to pick her back up. This is normal for college kids, but that doesn't seem to matter to her parents and to her sister who obviously has a problem with thinking for herself. If they want normal, they can expect their daughter to party hard and come back home with all kinds of different guys. That's normal.

People like that just want a reason to complain. And she needs to learn how to embrace the word "No" and "F-ck off."

Tell your friend that it's time that she live out on her own. She's an adult, and they're going to keep giving her hell if she lives with them. She's got what it takes to be independent, so now it's just a matter of her doing it. She'll be able to pay rent and do all those things just fine. So now, all she has to do is simply cut the cord.

Now that I'm in college, I don't have a curfew. Who has to know that I was out until 3 in the morning? Don't ask, don't tell.

As for that little sister, I would have some words for her.

Said friend is a member here on RPG-D, and she's seen this thread. She wants to move out -we were looking at apartment rates the other night, and as soon as I can get hold of her I'm dragging her out to the financial aid building to look at loans for tuition and living expenses.

Her parents and sister don't like me at all. HOORAY FOR BEING A BAD INFLUENCE!

P.S. - Oh, I've had words with this little sister before. I sent her a very long, very detailed message explaining just what I thought of her behavior. You know what I got in response to that seven-paragraph essay that was polite but firmly pointed out that she was the little sister and my friend was not?

"Well, that's immature."

That's the only response I got. At all.

I'd kick the sister in the head.

Really hard.

wow. that's just.....
wrong.
utterly horribly stupidly wrong.
i could also lend you- in addition to the stupidity claymore- an arrogance war axe, should you be interested. :)

i second Lady H's sentiment.

That's really REALLY horrible. I am completely different than what you might call 'normal' I listen to rock, indie and alternative music; I have stripy multicoloured wallpaper in my bedroom; I watch a series called The Universe on the History Channel and Tim Burton rocks my directorial world. That is not wierd. I am not a freak. Your friend is not a freak and does not deserve to be, for want of a better word, shunned by her own family. She needs to stand up for herself and her nature and if her parents don't like it? Tough! They can't change her. And if I were her I would have moved out a looooooong time ago.

I have only one more thing to say and I use this all the time:

To me, Normal does not exist.

Normal, if taken literally, must be the state of the majority of people or things.
I see every person as an individual.
With different thought processes, likes, dislikes, dreams.
I cannot label Normal because no one is even remotely the same.

(And if that's a light thought process you should see what happens when I actually get deep :p)

ooh. second post. xD. i know what you mean, though. most've my life i've had a street full of friend's who have "posh" parents. it makes me laugh, but i love their children <33. another thing, you can't exactly force her to move out, if she wanted to, she would.

i'm sure her parent's are just worried about her being alone for her NORMAL natural born life. xP.

my two cents. ;]

To quote Agent Fox Mulder, "How do you define normal?"

Your friend needs to move out. ASAP. Dealing with that cannot be good for her. And her sister needs to shut her little busybody know-it-all mouth already.

Here, have something I made a while ago for just a situation:

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/8213/cluebatvl4.jpg

Define 'normal'. Everyone's 'not normal' to some extent - or we'd all be identical, and that would be boring as hell.

I feel for you and your friend, I really do.

I wonder if it was be possible for your friend to act 'normal' to her parents' definition for one day - but make it obvious that that suits a six-year-old. Y'know, PINK and wearing her hair in bunches and things like that.

Maybe not though.

Maybe she could get hold of some music by The Tribe, or Phatfish, which are Christian rock groups, and tell her parents specifically that they are Christian, if it's the rock they've got a problem with.

It's an idea. Not necessairly a good one, but I don't necessarily do good ideas. I hope she figures something out. And I know she knows you're a good friend to her, too.

My parents got together over a D&D game. There was never any hope for me.

My sympathy goes out to your friend! I love when people who choose to be different are respectful to people who look down on their lifestyle. It just goes to show that she's the bigger person.