Parental Units

I don't talk much about my family on this blog, but it's occurred to me in the recent years that there is a wealth of stories in this untapped area. I tell most of these stories verbally to friends for amusement, but the only time I've really ever written any of this down has been for class.

One time, in Professor Hijuelos' class, we had to pick three personal photographs and write an essay related to those photographs. I ended up choosing three different ones and writing vignettes related to each. Turned out the most interesting one to my classmates was my parents' wedding photo. I described in great detail our living room mantel, in particular: lots of Lego sculptures of pop culture icons, such as Ronald McDonald and Yoda. When I went into the story of my parents' wedding photograph, I talked about how they met at a Pizza Hut, and how they didn't really have a wedding or honeymoon--they invited a friend to take pictures at the courthouse and then invited aforementioned friend out to dinner at Pizza Hut afterwards.

My classmates ate this shit up, I kid you not. They started pondering about the implications of first-generation immigrant frugality and the celebration of American consumerism on the fireplace mantle, the symbol of the hearth and home. The only thing I'd ever thought about our Yoda Lego statue was how my father had proudly brought that statue home when Target threw a promotional event for when the Star Wars Episode 1 first came out to see who could guess the correct number of bricks, and I wondered what proportion of the ballots came from our house. (Including my cousins and grandparents who were visiting that summer, and we probably each filled out like 5 ballots per person... yeah.)

Speaking of Target, just today, I went with my mother there to buy some things. Among the other household necessities, she picked out four gift cards and asked the cashier to put 10 dollars on each. Why, you may ask? Because my dad collects Target gift cards, which most people may not realize often come with nifty toys (like balsa wood airplanes or Pez dispensers) and slick designs. He buys gift cards, and then uses those gift cards to buy more gift cards, essentially cycling money through an endless string of Target gift cards without actually buying anything.

Anyways, why am I writing about this? Just now, I got into another argument with my mother, which was really more of an aftershock related to the fight we had before about my editing fees. I mentioned in my previous post about how she has a tendency to pull unrelated crimes out of the ether, but good golly, her attempt today was absolutely egregious. It was infuriating. But if you're curious about how my mind works, it goes like this:

1. THIS MAKES ME SO [fill in emotion here].
2. I need to convey this in writing. / How can I use this for my own writing?

I was planning to rant about it, to get it out my system, but then I realized: A) I've already talked about this before and I don't want to sound like a broken record; B) I hate whiners and don't want to become one; C) Negativity is not good for the soul.

So I decided to try writing about something more light-hearted instead. And still ended up coming back to it in the end. Sigh.