Part 2 – Parental Guidance | Amma & Appa
I ended part one of this series talking about how awesome my sister is, without even mentioning that she wouldn’t be in my life, and I in hers, without our amazing parents.
I like to think that we’re a pretty normal family. We try to tell each other everything, even if it means getting yelled at. Basically we’re a family that can’t shut up. Everyone keeps babbling on about their opinions, arguing it out, till someone just says “let’s eat”.
I’ve had a lot of arguments with my parents, mostly as an adult, because marriage. But we still get along pretty well. I think it’s important to be open minded as we grow together in our different stages of life and that’s one thing my parents do. They adapt to our way of thinking when they can.
Homer is the dog that’s the love of our lives, the apple of our eyes. But before Homer, my sister had a dog she kept at home secretly – Bunty. When my dad found out, he was beyond furious and it came to a point where he said “either the dog goes or I go” – our Chandler moment. This was about 15 years ago. Today, I’ll let the images of Dad and Homer speak for themselves.
I think this is a perfect example of how we adapt as a family. And also a perfect example of how a dog can solve any problems.
There are still a lot of things we disagree on as a family. But that doesn’t stop us from doing what we each want. At the end of the day, our parents have raised us to embrace our individualism and independence, but not abuse the latter. Which, let’s be real, we’ve all done at one point in our rebel teen (or even adult) years.
As people of the younger generation, I think we are quick to jump the gun or point fingers at our older generation when they don’t keep up with the trends or have trouble figuring out technology or just general acronyms. But let’s not forget that we have a younger generation who would be equally if not more lost if we handed them a 1000 page yellow pages telephone directory, or a floppy disk. I think I lost my patience when a kid thought the pound sign on an old phone is a “hashtag”.
Being adaptable is difficult. But our parents come from a generation that are very adaptable. Coming from a family of 9 siblings, I know my dad had to share a room with 9 kids. And had a “bed” on the floor. My mom moved to Zambia after getting married and adapted to the living conditions after living her whole life in India. She taught herself to drive so she wasn’t stuck at home.
I cannot even begin to stress the amount of annoyance we were as kids. Not just my sister and I but us as a whole generation. With our constant stupid questions of why the sky is blue or why mom is doing a particular thing in the kitchen or why dad is sleeping…to constant tantrums of not wanting to eat or wanting to be with our friends outside or screwing up in school. We have tested our parents’ patience levels and now when they live with us and ask us questions, it irritates us.
Life has come a full circle that way. And although I will go ahead and preach about how we should be patient with our family as we all grow old together, I am absolutely sure that I will not practice what I preach. Because my parents have seen me throw tantrums as a 6 year old, 20 years later, we can throw tantrums together. There’s nothing wrong in that. Who else can we be ourselves with apart from our families?
I’ll end Part 2 with that thought. Part 3 will hopefully be about Homer but let’s just say this “Dogumentary” is a shallow dive of the things we discussed on our road trip. Any guesses as to what Part 3 would be about?
THE IDLE MIND 