#first off I find it funny how much they frame Ted as a playboy here

[theodore-sallis]

“All The Faces of Fear,” Monsters Unleashed (Vol. 1/1973), #5.

Writer: Tony Isabella; Artist: Vicente Alcázar

[bynkii]

How My Parents Kept Me Drug-Free…mostly

Two very imperfect people allowed what they saw to override what they were told

I was born in 1967, and graduated high school in 1984. I went to school in Miami, all of it. Miami, especially in the 1970s and 1980s was anything but drug-free. They were everywhere, and so was the war on drugs. So to say I was “aware” of drugs is a monstrous understatement. I knew who sold what, where, when, and for how much.

My parents were both children of the depression. Their drug of choice was alcohol. Both of them were, for a time, alcoholics. My dad never was able to stop, although smoking killed him before beer could. My mom, as she did with everything, eventually set it aside, because…well, I guess because she was done with it.

Neither of them were dysfunctional, although my dad came closest. They both got up and went to work, my mom more than my dad. (In my dad’s defense, he was mangled by a car accident in 1978. He never walked right after that, and was in a lot of pain. That may not excuse his behavior, but it does explain much of it.) My mom…Margaret Thatcher was called the Iron Lady, but my mom was fuckin’ steel. She was the terminator. In an era when women who worked were still looked down upon, she worked. In a city that almost required cars, she walked and took buses. Note: buses were only if the walk was over a mile each way. In Miami.

Every fucking day she got up and went to work.

My mom and I had an occasionally complex relationship, and we argued, oh we argued, but I always respected the hell out of her, because when a lot of people might have given up, she put one foot in front of the other and made sure her family was taken care of. If that meant occasional times on food stamps, then she did that. I asked her about that once, since she came from a generation not known for being comfortable with welfare, and she said “I never felt any shame. I wasn’t using food stamps because I was lazy. I was using them to feed my family. If anyone had a problem with that, fuck ‘em.”

(My mom was regularly profane. I get it from her. She even told me my first “dirty” joke. No, really:

What’s worse than necking with Dracula?

Getting fingered by Capt. Hook.

People think I can cuss? HA. She could peel the paint off a battleship on an off day.)

From her I think I get my lack of addictive behavior. A few years back, when I realized that any amount of alcohol gave me pissah hahtbuhrn, wicked pissah hahtbuhrn, I just stopped drinking. About as much effort as you’d turn off the lights. Been drinking since I was…what, 16? At 46 I stopped, because it had become inconvenient.

That’s kind of handy.

From my dad, and my mom, but lead by my dad, I learned to really see what’s going on around me, and to not let “common sense/wisdom/knowledge” override reality.

My dad was one of the 2–3 youngest of ten, and one of the last, maybe the last to marry and have a kid. So he spent a lot of time as the cool uncle, and a lot of time observing kids. Parents too, but kids mostly, and he realized some things about how they behaved and what motivated them, and so when I came around, he did things a little differently.

For one, while neither of them was hardly permissive, there wasn’t the “NO AND I HAVE SPOKEN” shit. There was more “No, because I am smarter and more experienced than you, and I may not explain it to you all the time, but there are reasons, and in time you will learn them.” For example, bad words. In pre-school, I rode a bus, (it was the 60s/70s, little kids did stuff like that) with Jr. High kids. Jr. High kids love, love, love teaching littler kids profanity, and I was an adept student. Also, my folks had no problem with casual invective around the house.

But when I’d pop off with it, instead of making a big deal about it, they’d calmly explain that was a word I wasn’t yet allowed to say, help me find an alternative and move on. The reason why was simple: power. My dad had realized that making A Big Deal over things with kids gave the things power. And if the thing had power, then the person using it also had power. It’s why little kids will force their mouths to learn how to say “Brachiosaurus” in short order but mangle “Spaghetti” for months. “Brachiosaurus” has power. “Spaghetti”, not so much.

Before the reader scoffs at this, I can tell you it works better than you might think. My son grew up in a house full of casual profanity and yet, the only time he used it was “appropriate” for the situation. Someone cut us off in traffic. He dropped a trophy on his foot. Some kid punched him in the face. That sort of thing. Never the “wait until it’s the worst possible moment and COCCCCCCKSUCCCCCKERRRRRR!!!!!” shit.

Same thing with porn. Once my folks caught me hiding various magazines full of the wonders of boobies and vagina, and as I understand it, my mom rolled her eyes, my dad chuckled, they threw it out and got me a subscription to Playboy.

Yes, that was their solution to illicit porn. Playboy. The result? About six months after the subscription kicked in, (and let me tell you, when you’re in high school, parents who get you a sub to Playboy are INSTANTLY cooler than hell), I come in from the mailbox with the latest issue, reading…the interview. My dad sees this and asks “Whatcha reading J.C.?”

I respond with “Interview with Patty Hearst. It’s the first one she’s given since the whole SLA thing, and she’s talking about her life inside it, it’s really interesting.” “Who’s the centerfold?” “Beats me, haven’t even looked…yet…you son of a bitch…” and he is laughing. My mom was also home, and she is laughing. They are both laughing, almost howling, because they had taken one of the most forbidden fruits and turned it into something less exciting than an apple.

I had picked up an issue of Playboy and immediately dumped to the most interesting part: the interview. That crafty fucker had known that would happen, he’d known it. Because he’d realized that it was the forbidden aspect of it that made it cool. I mean, yeah, boobies, but that had become secondary.

He had even told me the theory once. “It’s like this: if you want your kid to eat popcorn like a fiend, ban it. Ban it from the house, ban it from conversation, ban the word, hell, make corn sinful. By the end of the month, you’ll open a closet door and drown in an avalanche of Orville Redenbacher’s best product. But if you make things no big deal, if you make them just well, normal then there’s no forbidden aspect to make it cool and pretty soon, it’s no more interesting than anything else.”

He had told me what was going to happen, and I still fell for it. Now, it helped my Aunt had worked for Playboy in Chicago, and my dad and mom used to go to the Chicago Playboy Club on dates, so they had a more expansive view of Playboy than most, but still…goddamnit, they pwned me. Wasn’t the last time.

Right around that time, I come home drunk for the first time. Maybe before. I was 14. My friend had just turned 19, and at the time in Fl, that was the drinking age and…his parents were out of town. Fucking epic. Garbage can punch. I was so wasted I walked around in his above-ground pool for two hours. Didn’t even realize it until someone told me:

JOHN!

WHAT!

WHY ARE YOU IN THE POOL!

I’M IN THE POOL?

YEAH! WHY ARE YOU IN THE POOL?

OH THANK GOD, I THOUGHT I’D PISSED MYSELF!

Was-TED. That was also the night I discovered you can indeed puke through your nose. That hurts, by the way. Also smells awful, simply awful.

So I get a ride home, and in some amount of time get from the street to the apartment we lived in. And from there, I tried to play it smooth. It might have worked except:

I wore no shirt

I had one shoe and one sock on

Not on the same feet

I was missing my glasses

I was blind as a bat without them

I was still soaking wet

I smelled of vomit

I took god knows how long to get the key in the lock, bounced off the door frame six times just walking in, and yet still thought I had them all fooled. In my head, I said “Well, that was quite the soiree, boy am I tired, I’m off to bed, cheers!” (for some reason, I thought being “british” would make me sound “sober”.

According to my folks, what came out of my mouth was “AABBTHFEEEEERS!!!” and I barely made it to the bed. They said it was all really funny as hell.

I was smooooove y’all.

The next day, after they woke me with metal spoons on pans and worked me like hell all day, my dad said “Look, I get it, you want to drink sometimes. That’s fine. But, I want you to be safe, so if you want to drink, let us know, we’ll buy some extra and you can do it here, where we can keep an eye on things.”

Coolest parents ever, right?

Hah.

At first it was cool. Then the novelty wore off, (HINT), and I kind of stopped. My Senior Year, in a minor miracle, I get invited to a party. I tell my parents where I’m going, party, don’t wait up, etc., and off I go. While I’m there, someone comes in and says we all need to go into the woods in back of the house, <someone> had just scored a keg of Bud. My response? “Nah, I’ll stay here, Bud’s shit, and I can drink it whenever…I…want…at…..home………I need to use your phone.”

Dial, dial, ring, ring, <click>…”Yeahhhlow” “You ASSHOLE” Cue braying laughter, because the old bastard knew, somehow he knew what had happened. “Let me guess, someone scored some beer and it’s not that exciting is it?” “YOU’VE RUINED PARTYING AND PORN, WHAT KIND OF DEMON ARE YOU?” “The kind that’s way smarter than you are.” “….I hate you so much right now.” “I win” <click>

But that was just it. By not hiding behind “just say no” or the rest, instead being somewhat sensible about it, my parents avoided the binge drinking shit that so many other parents don’t, because I had no reason to hide it. It wasn’t forbidden fruit, or even particularly interesting fruit. It was just booze. It was just beer. About as interesting as the hamburger one would drink it with.

When it came to talking about drugs, instead of trying to scare me, they talked to me like an adult. They talked about what medicine/science knew about the effects of drugs, which ones were worse than others, and why needles were bad news. Based on reality, not hysteria.

My dad, as it turned out, had tried a lot of things while he was in the Army in Korea. He was unimpressed with most of it. Heroin especially, because that shit had made him sicker than hell. He didn’t know what the high was like, he was too busy vomiting. Probably doing his first ever hit of China White and then getting on a C-119 for the flight between Japan and Korea didn’t help.

That made far more of an impression on me than Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” idiocy. (Imagine thousands of stoners yelling “NO! NO!” at their bongs before every hit, and you have an idea of how effective that shit wasn’t.) They both hated that kind of thing because it was almost lying, and they knew that if they lied to me about it, the lie would be found out, and then I’d start wondering what else they had lied about.

The truth was, they told me, was that most people who use drugs don’t end up in a ditch. They manage their bad habits. But some do end up in a ditch, and you don’t know which category you’re in until it’s too late. So before you try something, fucking think a minute, and ask yourself why you’re trying it. If the only reason is to be “cool”, maybe that’s kind of stupid. I later found out that my mom held the opinion that 90% of my contact with drugs would be on a quest for sex, and to be honest, she was right. The only reason I tried crack, for example, was because a really hot girl I knew was into it, and she offered to let me try via shotgunning it. Making out with really hot girls was way high on my list of things to automatically say “yes” to, and so I did.

As I was really drunk at the time, all it did was make me sober for 45 minutes. That sucked. The making out part was all right though. Making out is always all right.

According to popular wisdom, as a child of alcoholics, I should have some serious booze problems myself.

Yet, I don’t, nor did I really ever. I’d drink to excess here and there, but not as a “Tuesday” kind of thing. At parties and shit, sure, but just because I could? Nah, not so much, and I honestly think my parents’ approach to all of this was a big part. It seems to have worked well, my son didn’t even try booze until his 21st birthday, and I had told him years before that if he ever wanted to at home, he was welcome to do so.

That’s how his mom and I approached drugs in general. Don’t lie. Give him accurate facts. Don’t over- or downplay the reality of getting high. Be honest in an adult fashion, not some bullshit “it’s all the devil’s dick” kind of stupidity. Seems to have worked.

Look, I’m not saying that my way or my parents way is foolproof. But, as a society, we’ve been trying this EEEEEVIL! EEEEEEVIL I TELLS YAH! shit for decades now, and it’s been a pretty massive failure. Maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to scare our kids and failing because we’re both lying to them and treating them like they are stupid, maybe we should treat them like they are the smart people they actually are, and just talk to them honestly and openly about alcohol and other drugs. Fear and lying are a pretty shitty way to teach anyone about anything if you think about it. Maybe we should stop doing that?