The Judgment of Parents and Children

Me and Martha have been parents now for two and half years. We're makin' it I reckon...he's healthy, we can take him out in public, people like bein' around him, he minds well. Well, at least he minds other adults...his "teachers", the lady who watches him at Church and The Sister.

He's constantly pushin' it with us...always schemin' and get's a little lippy sometimes. He's got his Moma's big, beautiful brown eyes and a stubborn streak that's force is as strong as it's origins are mysterious. :cough:

We were told that as parents we'd make mistakes...then we were told again, then again, and again. Got emails and text sayin' you will screw up...received a certified letter saying it's inevitable...some relative or close friend hired a sky writer. It was if we hadn't been raised by parents of our own :) .

I'm sure we're messin' up somewhere...not whippin' him enough I reckon. My Momma expresses regret now about every whoopin' she ever gave me, but the truth is I deserved 'em. I wasn't nearly as bad as The Sister of course, but if there was one or two that I didn't deserve...there was one or two things she didn't know about. It all evens out.

I'm not really thinkin' about parental regrets this morning though...it's too early for that anyway. It'll be years before we know just how badly we've screwed up. I'm thinking of things I should have done differently as a kid.

And not like handing my Daddy an atrocious mid-term report right after the Blues Brothers finished. I thought for sure he'd be in a better mood to take it after laughing for two hours straight...that just...that...that turned out to be a really bad idea.

I'm talking about the things I could've and should've tried to get away with like the all-ages Replacements show in the summer of 88. I was staying with my buddy for a couple of weeks in Tallahassee. We were millin' around pestering college kids in Vinyl Fever like we did most afternoons when we heard the Replacements would be playing that Friday night at the Musical Moon.

We knew we'd have to get permission but like most 15 years olds we never internalized anything...we were gonna be there. His momma was fine with it as long as my parents were. Shockingly the answer was no...they didn't want me getting a head-start hanging out in bars. Crushed...just crushed.

We should've gone...we snuck out of his house all the time anyway. The thing is we didn't ask permission to sneak out...we never had discussed sneaking out of the house so no one had ever specifically said we couldn't...it wasn't a matter of direct defiance you see.

My parents had done a really good in the sense that I hated the idea of disappointing them. The other thing was I just didn't want the hassle of getting in trouble...I'd be on my own soon enough. Plus that little town we lived in at the time was bad enough without being stuck in my room for a month. We went to the movies instead. Faced with a direct "No you may not"...I flinched. I should've run the risk...even if we'd gotten caught I'd have seen The Replacements* and chances are I'd be ungrounded by now.

Funny thing is that same summer or maybe the next...I ended up in a seedy apartment complex inhabited by a punk-rock car thief and the Filipino drug dealers he worked for. I had been give permission to go to the movies with an older associate that must remain nameless and ended up getting to know his friends instead...I actually thought we were going to the movies when we left the house. I hadn't been told I couldn't hang out with car thieves and dope pushers...besides what was I suppose to say when the little dealers walked in carrying Domino's pizza and automatic rifles...."I don't think my momma would want me here"?

Despite the danger and the illicit stench of the affair...I can't say I regret it. The car thief turned out the be the genuine article (to this day he may the only actual punk I ever talked to)...he had a bleached pompadour and his arms were covered in tattoos...this was long before every Sunday School teacher had a sunburst or a lily tattooed on her ankle. The only people I knew who had tattoos were old men like my Grandpa or fishermen. He was from Los Angeles and he'd seen everybody...Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du and on. He knew Billy Zoom from X.

Of course when I asked about him some years later I was told he'd been killed by the cops. I wasn't sure how my...associate...had come to know these jokers, but if I had to guess it was probably at an all ages show :).

Anyway...

*I get what comfort I can by reminding myself that by this point Bob Stinson had been kicked out of the band...so it wasn't really the Replacements anyway.