The Family Rules

Rules were hard to come by in my family as most of ours were implicit, or unspoken.

The first implicit rule was in regards to my mother. Never, ever, try to talk to her during one of her television shows unless it was on a commercial. Absolutely nothing I have to do, say, or ask is more important than prime time television and I was to learn that at a young age. If I was to break this rule my mother would give me that motherly look that would scare me away and remind me to never do that again. Now that my parents have upgraded to DVR I am now allowed to speak if I can see that the red light is recording and my mom is assured that she can rewind those few seconds I spoke and watch every single moment of the program.

Next was if you saw my dad getting on the motorcyle than grab a helmet and expect to get ice cream. Typically if my dad was also getting in the car without my mom the same rule applied, but it was not a guarantee. This was always my favorite thing to do, especially as my bedroom was right on top of the garage and I would race down the steps if I heard the garage door go up. It was always a good time that my dad and I got to spend together and it really drew us close at a young age as I knew that I could always talk to him. My dad is still the same way, even though I am about to become a parent myself, and it is so refreshing to know that some things never change.

The last explicit rule may seem rude to the traditional family and odd to any outsiders viewing my family; but it was completelly normal and anticipated from my family. Whenever i leave the house I always say "bye jerk face" or "see you later dipstick" to my dad. We have never used the phrase "I love you" as our love is shown in a more sarcastic manner. Growing up my dad was always coming up with ridiculous nicknames for me that made no sense so I started coming up with names back such as meany head and other childish phrases. As I have got older I have tried to outwit him and come up with every day words that I can use that have more of a story behind them. For example, when I got my first car I was skimming through the owner's manual and I saw the word "dipstick" so I turned to my dad quickly and said "Look! Your name is in this book!" and poined at dipstick with this huge grin that I beat my dad to the punch; unfortunately, he promptly looked up and said "And there is yours" as he pointed at the words "air bag". I have never been able to keep up with his humor but we have tried to maintain our relationship by being odd and calling each other meaningless names.

The only explicit rule we had was a very reasonable rule. I still lived with my parents after I turned 18 but unfortunately my friends all lived twenty minutes away from me. Because of this dilemma it was hard for me to go home and write my parents a note that I was going to stay at a friend's house when I would not know till really late so we came up with a great deal. Our compromise was that by the time my dad would wake up in the morning my car needed to be in the drive way or there needed to be a text on his phone that I was safe. I never once broke this rule and it made living at home as an adult much easier because if I did not know where I was going to be sleeping by five in the morning than I had a problem! I knew that their intentions were to not worry and to just know that I was not stuck on the side of the road some where and I respected that since I was living under their roof, rent free.

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My response is to the Dean Family

I think it is great that your family has created stability by enforcing the same rules when both parents are there or just the mom or just the dad. This was definitely lacking in my family and caused a lot of tension as I knew which parent to go to when I wanted a particular thing. It is great that you have noticed that and prevented it from occurring and from constant arguing later on in life.