folks

[deathboy]

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

My folks have been phoning, emailing and texting me for the last week or two.

I have not got back to them, which I do feel bad about, and I know how frustrating it is for them, but the reason is this:

What they wanted to do was to talk me into going home for my birthday.

Home. Burntwood. Shittest one-horse town in the midlands. I don't think they even have the horse anymore. I suspect they hung it on charges of witchcraft. No-horse town. NEGATIVE HORSE TOWN. Except that they think that minus numbers are the work of the devil. I think they once burned a man alive for using a fraction.

Burntwood favours supermarkets, teenage pregnancy and casual violence. I HATE 'home'. I loathe the place and most of the people in it with a white-hot passion. Every single time I go back, I remember how much I hate it.

My parents want to see me for my 30th, but, being the laziest people in the universe (when it comes to visiting their kids), instead of saying "hey, it's your 30th birthday, you know, YOUR birthday, we'll come and see YOU" - oh, no. They want me to get on the motorway for a few hours, return to the brood nest and have a nice game of "kick the swan's face off", or whatever it is they do in Staffordshire for entertainment.

They had a cinema there when I was a kid. It got closed. I suspect they thought it contained mischievous spirits.

I haven't even worked out what I DO want to do for my birthday, but I know that being in Burntwood is not a part of this plan. So, I finally cracked and called my dad back after a voicemail messge listing the various ways in which he'd tried to get hold of me and how it was important.

When he picks up, after the obligatory mock-surprise at my calling him, he reiterates the list of ways in which he has attempted to contact me. I explain that I'm sorry, but that I haven't worked out what I want to do and meant to call back when I actually knew, but that I wasn't planning to come home.

"Who said anything about coming home?"

Well, you did, dad. And mom did. You both did. In text messages, on a near-daily basis.

"We could come and see you, maybe"

Yes, but you won't.

"And of course, we get to see Corben"

Which is, to be honest, what I suspect the real reason is, entirely. You want to see the baby, you can't be arsed coming down here. Wait for it, wait for it...

"But I did think that maybe you might want to come up here or something..."

Of course you did. Why in the name of hell would I want to do this?

"I thought you might want to see Phil or something"

I would like to, and indeed if I did come back, that would pretty much be the only reason. I'm more interested in seeing if I can get him to come and visit me. You know. For my party. At mine. Where all my stuff is. Where I will be.

"OK, OK, I just thought you might like to see yer mate, but if you don't want to..."

Yes indeed, let's make it sound as if the only reason for my not returning to the rural outskirts of purgatory is to specifically avoid my best friend.

He then goes through the list of how he tried to get in touch with me again, and how upset he was that I didn't call back.

THIS IS WHY I DON'T CALL BACK. YOU SEEM TO BE ONLY CAPABLE OF COMMUNICATING VIA EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.

I'd like to see 'em. Probably not on my actual birthday, but near it. And in London, where they have cinemas and arcades and computer game shops and taxis and the internet and pizza delivery and electricity and very rarely sacrifice pigs to the harvest god to prevent him from curdling the milk or round up their neighbours and burn them in a wicker man.

Not north of the river, anyway.

I do love my folks, I would very much like to see them, but they can chuffing well come down the motorway or, frankly, whistle for it.

Parents. Doesn't matter how old you are, they can always make you feel like a kid again. Gah.

Comments

[alterred.livejournal.com]

*nods* Oh I get this kinda bullshit all the time, mate!

And I can't even delete them from my friends list!

[my-window-seat.livejournal.com]

If I belonged to the metaquote community, I'd have to ask you if I could post this.

As I'm not, I'm hoping someone else will do it for me. :O

[cyberspice.livejournal.com]

I sympathise. I totally do. I'm 41 and I still get made to feel like a kid. One of my sisters lives in London and the other lives with her brood in Whitley Bay. So have they ever come and visited me, just me, ever? Have they fuck. I'm seeing them in just over a week because they're collecting my Nephew from my sister up north. They're passing so they want me to meet up for lunch. But if I want to see them for any time at all I have to drive down to South Wales or sometimes up to the North East. 'Cause its easy for me as I'm "on my own"....

[lis0r.livejournal.com]

Ah, there' nothing like recognising the validity of lesbian poly relationships...

[flywingedmonkey.livejournal.com]

Tell 'em Corben can't possibly go to Burntwood as he's at a fragile stage and very sensitive to his enviroment. And that they live in a hellish shithole.

JmC
Lives in the Midlands and has been to Burntwood

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

And that they live in a hellish shithole.

*laughs out loud*

I tell 'em, man, I do tell them!

Lives in the Midlands and has been to Burntwood

My condolancies, amigo. Burntwood! Gateway to... Cannock!

[feuermaus.livejournal.com]

Your parents and mine would get on fantastically. Wonderful eh?(!) Still, if it serves as anything, it's to show you what NOT to do when Corben gets older.

D. tells me that your home town is like Loughbrough. Since I would happily raze Loughbrough to the ground and rigourously stamp on anything that survived until all hints of its' existence are destroyed... I feel for you.

Mind you, you might not think it, but growing up in Whitby was probably the same as Burntwood. The only town that can close the only cinema for 35 miles and replace it with a British Telecoms building. NIce...(!)

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

I've been to Loughborough - it's nice compared to Burntwood :)

Mmm, I can imagine Whitby was possibly worse, although Burntwood has nothing, Lichfield, Cannock and Walsall are nearby. They're SHIT too, but they're a half-hour bus-ride away if you want to visit somewhere exotic, like Argos.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

you know, this stuff makes me SO glad that my contact with my parents is limited to a phone call every month or so, and seeing them no more than once every 2 years. i don't even KNOW their phone number.

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

You win at this ;)

[cavalorn.livejournal.com]

They expect you to take a less than six month old baby on to the motorway for several hours, in what will almost certainly be pissing awful weather conditions, just to fulfil their emotional agenda?

What the fuck?

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

They both have this trick: there's something they want you to do, that you definitely won't want to do, so they somehow come up with a reason that they think would make you want to do it. I assume they discuss it, because by the time you speak to them, they're convinced that it makes perfect sense, that you will simply love to do it, and are honestly taken-aback and crest-fallen that you are anything other than in rapture at the idea.

The thing they'll come up with will, itself, be so contrived, so absolutely contrary to the very core of your being and the veneer of justification so slender that you look straight through, immediately and ask why in god's name they didn't just ask you straight out.

But they won't. Because if you refused, they would have to concede that they only wanted you to do it for their benefit. This way round, they have a good arsenal to hit you with if you resist.

Thus it has always been with me folks. :/

[my-window-seat.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I'm thankful that my parents skipped out on the actual raising of me thing - being a latchkey kid of a single parent more interested in finding her next boyfriend has made me largely impervious to parental guilt. Must've saved a good chunk of change not buying Mother's/Father's Day cards, too.

Then again, it's also made me evil.

::shrugs::
Trade-offs.

[rainbowskye.livejournal.com]

Maybe return the calls etc in future, but keep being firm about where you want to see them? Particularly given that several hours on motorways at holiday time isn't that much fun for anyone, but is a particular source of delight with a small baby, which surely they will recognise. Standing up to it worked for me (mostly) in the end with my Mum but it takes a lot of time, effort and heartache.

Just make sure you keep all these memories safe somewhere, so that when you start turning into them in a few years' time Corben can call you on it ;)

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

Yar, you're right. I should have phoned them back, I just wanted to avoid the attempted crowbarring. I thought that if I planned what I WAS going to do, it would make it easier to explain to them that I wasn't coming home.

I do stand up to them, I just hate ... I don't know. How I feel, I suppose. Very much like a teenager saying "Moommmmmmm, I don't WANNA go to the shops with you. I wanna play on my biiiiiiiiike." - when in actuality, I'm fairly sure I'm being reasonable. Burntwood is a hole, the journey would suck and it's my fricking birthday, so they should come to me. I think they probably will, too, if I make it clear I'm not coming back and want to see them, it'll just be much more painful to engineer than it should be.

[wev.livejournal.com]

i'm continually amazed how the tiniest hick towns seem to give the world the most unique people. there is no way you can travel with a baby that age on the expressway, and you should only do what you want on YOUR birthday. =)

[toripink.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if parents think that now that you're old enough, it's about time you learnt your place and bent over backwards to accomodate them rather than actually having an equal, mutually respectful and considerate relationship with their offspring.

Heaven forbid :)

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

This site? This is brilliant. All the Burntwood you could ever need, it seems. Not that I got past the front page...

http://www.ws7.org.uk/

[devalmont.livejournal.com]

My parents live there too, and believe me, that website really bigs it up. Compared to the real thing that website makes it look FANTASTIC.

[nniaa.livejournal.com]

Sounds very much like the place I grew up. the kind of place where if you beat gay people enough they will turn straight, etc. Can't imagine why you wouldn't want to go back ;)

Use Corben as psychological blackmail to make them come to see you.

[digitalharlot.livejournal.com]

my mum is queen of emotional blackmail.....and has left me on many occasions throwing phones at walls, i have retaliated to her constant blackmail by

1)every time she phones i remark on how inconveniently times her calls are as i was just in the middle of fantastic sex- she soon hangs up with out so much as a incy wincy emotional farce...

2)put small child on phone and let her listen to the small mite yelling or gurgling.....also ends in cut short conversations

3)suddenly have a nappy from hell to change with a long description of the contents....

4)ask her to babysit....this one works magic as when you get a NO......you can do the emotional blackmail bit in return....and it assures no calls at least for 2 weeks

[danblood.livejournal.com]

oh, so THAT'S what babies are for!

[pete23.livejournal.com]

+1, except with Burnley.

i've bought the buggers tickets for the train in the end. they can come and see me. the missus seems to have some sort of residual guilt that their grandchild can get to > 2 months old without us trekking up to the frozen north to wave it at them. i say that they're my parents, and if they want hot child action then they can come and get it where it's hot. so to speak...

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how I see it.

They've already got two freebies, Liz has gone home for two weekends of her own accord (her folks live there, too) and she's dropped the nipper off for a visit. It is entirely time for them to get off their bums.

[alienfox.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad my Mum taught me the Olde Welsh Ways of emotional blackmail and moodiness.

I'm not so glad that she's behind me right now as I type this, telling me to hoover stuff. Maybe I should just get up and ram my dick into the hoover and ask her how that is.

xxx

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm starting to think this is a pan-celtic phenomenon... Though in my family's Oirish manipulative martial arts, we focus more on Catholic guilt, passive aggression and cutting sarcasm. My poor girlfriend is all at sea dealing with my mum, not having had my decades of Irish Catholic Emotional Commando training.

[flatline2010.livejournal.com]

If that's the same Burntwood that's just down the road from Lichfield then I wholeheartedly agree with every fucking thing you say. If not I do anyway but with substantially less credibility. Burntwood, home to the only pub I've ever been banned from BEFORE I even set foot inside. Bleh.

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

It is that Burntwood. I was born in a hospital in Lichfield >_<

Which pub?

[stevek.livejournal.com]

very rarely sacrifice pigs to the harvest god to prevent him from curdling the milk or round up their neighbours and burn them in a wicker man.

Not north of the river, anyway.

I can safely say I've not seen it done south of the river either, but then again I rarely go into central Croydon on a Friday or Saturday night these days, so things may have changed! ;-)

FWIW, some parents do have a fantastic grasp on emotional blackmail, there have been times when I feel like I'm 8 not 38 when dealing with my mum!

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I don't think it's particularly deliberate. They've spent so much of their life in the role of older, more-important adult versus foolish wee child... they're just used to it being that way.

Gives me the fear that I'll be the same, mind you :/

[voofy.livejournal.com]

my mum did the same thing

and I pointed out to her that she raised me, and I'm simply following her example - I think I saw my grandparents maybe 5 times in the 16 years I new them.

and that shut her up..

[deathboy.livejournal.com]

Bladdy 'ell. That's pretty bad. We did actually go to see my grandparents a few times every year, but apart from them living near the seaside, it was pretty clear they would NEVER come to visit us.

Oh. I see the pattern here.

heh.

[shesmymonkey.livejournal.com]

I have as little to do with my dad as possible and will leave him out of this, but with my Mum - I want to see more of her, speak to her more, I want her to come to the zoo with me for my bithgay this year, she makes me feel the right age (which is nice, when I was younger it felt like she was trying to restrict me but I was too young for a lot of what I was trying to do) - you can borrow her if you like, but not for long - I'll miss her (and you'll be sick of the dappiness). It's the rest of the world who try to make me feel younger than I am and I feel.

With regards to your birthgay, how they can assume you'll go there for your BigOne I don't know. Who wants to go home for their 30th? In 5 years when I get there, I'll probably want to go somewhere interesting for the day and be with Seb and Kaya. In fact, a nice holiday for a week or weekend would be nice, though I doubt we'll be able to afford anything then!!!

But I am sure they are also just being parents. I don't know this place you speak of that you came from, but it sounds like the sort of place that even though they live there, they should realise you'd like to stay away from!

[devalmont.livejournal.com]

Dude, we need to compare names and shit, because I swear my parents are your fucking parents too.

I still can't get over that we never met there.

[slutbunwalla.livejournal.com]

I keep finding out more and more people are younger than me. I thought for sure you were older.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Ahem... I grew up in Leicester. More words cannot express my loathing of that rubbish-strewn desert of sockmenders and regurgitated vindaloo, populated by resentful also-rans who ended up there - no-one goes there - and were so infected by the hopelessness of the place that they have lost the will to leave.

I used to arrange my business trips to London on the non-stop train from Nottingham, for the joy of seeing the hated 'Welcome to Leicester' sign go past with a roar of steel wheels and diesel, knowing that I wasn't stopping and they were welcome to it.

[mattp.livejournal.com]

YOU SEEM TO BE ONLY CAPABLE OF COMMUNICATING VIA EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.
I feel your pain.

(Background: My parents are separated)
My mum tried that with me during my dad's birthday party by asking whether I was going to visit her that evening.

Parents. Doesn't matter how old you are, they can always make you feel like a kid again. Gah.
Never has a truer word been spoken.

[hexadb.livejournal.com]

You're lucky. Try having your father-in-law living with you indefinitely. With a cat.

My parents tend to do the opposite - ie, call in unexpectedly. Or ring and say "We're 3 minutes away, is it ok if we call in?"

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I know what you mean. I grew up in rural Wisconsin. In the school I went to, when they handed out the science textbooks the teacher made us tear out the sections on geology and evolution and drop them in a trashcan he held as he walked the aisles between our desks - all to make sure those godless rocks didn't give us any false ideas about the earth being older than 6,000 years.

The one Catholic family had to live outside the town limits because there was an agreement between the two real estate agencies in town not to sell property within the village to Catholics. Although we had only 800 people, there were two of everything: grocery stores, butcher shops, hardware stores, etc. One for the Lutherans and one for the Presbyterians.

Kids played games like 'smear the queer' and 'nigger pile'. The annual football game was called (I kid you not) the Toilet Bowl and was commemorated with a parade where two high school kids were crowned the Toilet Bowl king and queen and rode a giant mock-up crapper through the streets as people threw toilet paper at them.

The folks still live there. I go back every couple of years but even with all the development of late it's still the same town it always was.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

Where in Wisconsin? I have relatives in Oshkosh, Kenosha, Silver Lake and Tomahawk. Even a few in some no-name place somewhat near Menomonie. Makes me glad my mother insisted on my father moving to Chicago instead of the opposite.