bitchy Category: Life
I have this thought, well, maybe more of a fear. It isn't an all consuming emotion, it's more of a nagging under the thoughts and happenings in the normal course of one's day. Losing my identity is something that I have always dreaded. Would I lose it in a long term relationship? Would I lose it after I was married with kids? When did your parents stop being "cool?" Not cool in the sense that they were able to understand you and relate to you when you were 17, just cool enough to give you your space as you played out your days knowing everything that a teenager thinks they know about the world.
There are individuals that I know who have such weak personalities that an identity consumed and tweaked by someone that has entered their life does not make that much of an impact. I've watched friends deteriorate to the point of being unrecognizable after entering relationships and not necessarily romantic unions either. I know my own personal resistance towards conforming to groups of people has contributed to me only having a handful of friends. Me being me, I've never been overly concerned about the amount of friends I have at any given point in time.
I am growing more worrisome because the older I get I start to connect some of the dots that make up the parallel between myself and my parents. Not in so much a literal sense of being connected in making the same decisions and mistakes, because I hope I've taken what my parents put on display and have learned a thing or two about what not to do. I also do not want to minimize the efforts my parent's made to raise my sister and I, because I believe they did quite well, I'm referring more to their ability to have a relationship with one another and how it affected them as individuals.
There are clear lines looking back to when my parent's stopped being "cool." You can look at something as obvious as their record collection as a metaphor, as a matter of fact. My Dad was very rock and roll, there were a few Doors albums, lots of Springsteen, some Grateful Dead, a Roxy Music album, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, and I think my Dad had a Ramone's record. Maybe it was his younger brother's, I can't really remember. Then again, my Dad had a copy of "Saturday Night Fever" also, which he claimed to have won in a trivia contest. Of course that did not save him from the scorn his children being thrust upon him, calling him "Disco Dad" and "Swalley Night Fever." My Mom was a fan of the 1970's singer songwriter types, lots of Cat Stevens, James Taylor and Elton John.
Around the time I was seven or eight, they became very uncool, at least as far as their taste in music. My Dad bought some Eagles tapes and even a Sade tape. My Mom was a big fan of Kenny G, Phil Collins and Rick Astley. You remember him, right? He was a very white, very British fellow with flaming red hair, however he had the voice of a black guy. In fact I remember quite well the conversation I had with a friend of mine at the time upon discovering that Mr. Astley was, in fact, white. My point is, when do you go from listening to acceptable rock music from the 60's, 70's and early 80's to listening to adult contemporary swill? How can something that is seemingly good go so wrong? And it's not like I'm even a big fan of the bands I listed that were in my parents' collection. It's just that if I were held against my will and tortured by my captors with music and my only two choices music that I would have to repeatedly listen to were Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or Kenny G's "Songbird" I'm afraid I would have to whip out my highly sharpened reverse psychology skills and convince them I've been a fan of Kenny G since my hair was long enough to style in a tight perm, not unlike Mr. G himself.
The question rolls around in my head like clothes in a dryer. Will this happen to me? Or worse yet, do I have a choice at all in when this will happen to me? Will I be stuck in a minivan seven or eight years from now listening to shitty Josh Groban albums going to a soccer game? These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.
This kind of music as a metaphor is one way to describe my parent's decent from them being cool before having kids to making impressionable youth listen to tenor sax while drying dishes on a school night. Another example would be a movie that my parent's liked quite a bit when I was a kid, and that movie was "Raising Arizona." You couldn't pay my Mom to watch "The Big Lebowski" now. The point is that they're both Coen Brother written, directed and produced movies. So what's the difference? Not too much, in my opinion. The only thing that has changed is my Mom's attitude to what is funny in respect to how this could possibly affect her as a parent and how she raises her kids. I know her thought process is "how does watching this type of movie make me a better parent to my children?" I know she doesn't ask that question much anymore, but when my sister and I were kids this was her thought process. She didn't make decisions on movies and music or what she read on personal taste, it was all a matter of how it related to her being a parent. I don't want to do that. I want to be a great parent, I just don't want to miss anything for myself because I lose me in my kids or wife. I think it's important to be connected to your family as a unit, your spouse as a companion and yourself the person as well.
I guess in some roundabout way, this is my point. I want to be able to watch filthy movies with filthy language when I have kids. Of course they will be viewed after the children are put to bed and movies like "Lebowski" will be put up so they can't watch them or just pop them into the DVD player when they are old enough. I'll probably even want to put an N.W.A. song on when I feel like the man is keeping me down at the age of 35. I don't want these things to be an indictment of how good a parent I am or am not.
The bottom line is I don't want to be an uncool dad or husband, then again I don't want to act like I'm trying to hard to remain in my twenties either, even though my twenties are still 2 and a half years away from being complete. Yikes. I suppose I'll act the same way to a certain extent. I'm sure I'll approach life in a slightly different fashion because I'll have to, hopefully all the while still holding on to certain ideals. I guess I'm one of those people that refuse to see marriage and kids as a one way ticket to hell and path to discontect from myself as an individual.
I don't really know what the fuck I'm trying to say at this point, I guess. I'm very frustrated for no good reason today. I'm especially frustrated because most everything I write about lately turns into a big sloppy mess. Male PMS maybe? Who knows.
 | Currently listening : 13 Songs By Fugazi Release date: By 11 April, 1990  |
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 | Stephanie   |
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| J.F. Whitaker  |
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